


On Fridays We Wear Taupe

by FabulaRasa



Category: DCU, DCU (Animated)
Genre: M/M
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2014-06-15
Updated: 2016-03-11
Packaged: 2018-02-04 19:49:05
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 15
Words: 51,804
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/1791052
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/FabulaRasa/pseuds/FabulaRasa
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Hal has suffered a serious injury, but his recovery is not going well, and Bruce has to step in and take over his care. Because where could that go wrong?</p>
            </blockquote>





	1. Chapter 1

Hal wrapped his hand around his cane even tighter, and struggled to keep still in his seat. It was hard, and the extent of his miscalculation about tonight was becoming clearer with every ragged breath he tried to calm. 

"It'd be great if you could make it," Barry had said, eyeing Hal the way he did so often these days—somewhere between concern and. . . well, whatever the word for more concern was. "I mean, I understand if you don't feel like it. But this is S.T.A.R. labs' gala event, and if you wanted to—"

"Bar," Hal had cut him off. "Of course I'll be there."

"Really?"

"Really. Not least because you said _gala_ , which by the way wins the prize for single gayest word in the English language. It even has the word _gay_ right in it. Plus, you're the guest of honor, how could I not be there?"

"Well I'm not the guest of honor, I'm really just one of several people being honored, but—yeah, okay, it's a big deal, fine, I admit it. You really think you might be able to make it?"

"Wouldn't miss it," Hal had said with a grin. "Seriously."

And now, he was regretting that decision with every agonized cell in his body. It was just, he hadn't calculated on quite so much sitting. Which he should have, at a banquet like this—great food, great liquor, lots of speeches, everybody applauding. Everybody sitting, for hours. It was a situation tailor-made for disaster, as far as his leg was concerned. He gripped the head of his cane tighter, and with his other hand made a fist under the table that pounded his good leg, over and over, like maybe he could drive the pain to that side, distract his body somehow. Even if he could just keep himself from passing out, that would be a victory. 

One good thing was how many people had turned out to help Barry celebrate. Clark was there, covering the event for the _Planet_ , and Bruce was there, as one of the main donors to S.T.A.R. labs. Clark was half a room away, over at a press table, but Bruce was right here at his table, and that had been worth the stiff price of admission in itself, watching Bruce in airhead socialite mode, pressing flesh, laughing too loud, downing scotch and sodas like water. And every now and again, those eyes—the way they would flick over to him. For what? What was he even doing, worried Hal was going to embarrass him, blow his cover? What an ass.

Under the table, Hal tried maneuvering his leg a bit, trying to straighten it out, massage under the knee joint. Nothing was going to help at this point, after hours of sitting with it bent. The evening was nearing its end, people were milling about between the tables, and the liquor was flowing freely, but there was still one more speech to go before Barry got his award, and he could make it, he had to make it. 

The vacant chair beside him was suddenly filled. "Jordan," Bruce said. 

"Go away," Hal said, through gritted teeth. If he talked to anyone, if he had to interact at all, he was going to lose it. Passing out wasn't really his worry—sobbing like a baby was what he was really afraid of. Crying out. 

There was a hand on his leg, his good one, underneath the table. What the ever-living fuck. The hand found his knotted fist, and gripped it. "Hold onto me," Bruce whispered. "As hard as you need to."

 _What the fuck are you doing, get away from me_ , Hal opened his mouth to say, but somehow his hand found Bruce's, and clutched it. His fingers dug into Bruce's hand, and he had to be causing him pain, but Bruce didn't even flinch. Someone on the dais was droning on and on, and then there was a wave of applause. Bruce leaned closer.

"We have to get you out of here," Bruce said, so softly no one sitting near them could hear a thing.

"No," Hal panted, desperate now. "No, I can't. Barry—he's getting—I can't miss it—"

"Hal," Bruce said, that same quiet, patient voice. "Barry got his award ten minutes ago. You're going to pass out. Please let me help you."

Hal licked his lips. He looked around him, at the tables, the people. Plenty of them were people he knew; lots of the League had managed to turn out for tonight. "Everybody," he said. "They'll know. They'll know I can't even. . . sit in a fucking chair for more than. . . _fuck_." He swore as another spasm convulsed his leg. 

"No one will know," Bruce said. "I swear it. Trust me. Are you ready?"

He nodded, because what really were his options at this point? Bruce leaned even closer. "You're going to have to let go of my hand."

"Sorry. Jesus. Sorry."

"Don't be. I'm right here."

"How," Hal swallowed. "How exactly is this going to work, exactly. Without everyone staring at the cripple, I mean."

The corner of Bruce's mouth twisted upward. "Because they'll be too busy staring at me. Watch and learn." With that, he rose. Rose and staggered a bit, enough to push himself into the chair of the woman at the table behind them. As he careened her direction, he gave Hal's arm a firm yank, pulling him up. 

"Sorry," Bruce was slurring. "So, so, so very sorry. You look ravishing this evening. Stunning. Are you—did we meet at St. Barts last year? No? Harold, what do you think, do you remember if we—oh, excuse me, so sorry, mind your toes, coming through."

Bruce was drunkenly weaving his way between the tables, clambering over people, half-falling into their laps, appearing to hold onto Hal for support when of course it was the other way around. His arm was around Hal's waist, and Hal had put his around Bruce's. Every time Hal would know for a certainty that his leg could not take it one more second, Bruce's grip on him would tighten, and he would steer him even more firmly another direction, half-carrying, half-dragging him across the ballroom. 

"Looking gorgeous this evening, Maribeth," he said, as he more or less fell across the lap of an extremely well-stacked blonde. " _Marjorie_ ," she snapped at him, and then they were in the columned arcade, out of sight of the tables. Bruce grabbed Hal's upper arm in a death grip and got him to the elevators, which—thank God—opened immediately. Hal sagged against him.

"Stay with me," Bruce murmured. "You did great. My car's just two levels down. I've got a syringe of painkillers in the glove box."

"Because of course you do," Hal murmured. He leaned against the elevator wall. He could barely talk, he was clenching his jaw so tight. 

"What made you think sitting in one of those ridiculous chairs for three hours was a good idea," Bruce was saying. "Your doctor should have explained why that was the opposite of a good idea. If I had a week, I couldn't explain why that was the worst idea you've ever had. Okay, here we go."

He put Hal's arm around his shoulders, and half-hoisted Hal upright. He couldn't help it this time, he really couldn't. He cried out, a small noise that he quickly smothered, but he turned his face aside in shame. 

"Hal," Bruce said, and the other voice was back, the quieter one. "Can you try a construct?"

He gave it a shot, he really did. But in this kind of pain, there was no way he could hold his focus long enough for anything other than a burst of green that shivered the elevator with light, and then sputtered and died.

"All right, don't worry about it," Bruce said. "My car's right over there, we can make it."

Hal nodded, and took a halting step forward, leaning most of his weight onto Bruce. It was no good; the leg collapsed. "Shit," he panted. 

"It's okay, I've got you." Bruce bent, then lifted, and suddenly Hal was in his arms, which really should not have been possible. 

"What. . . what the hell is wrong with you," Hal said. "You are freakishly strong."

"I've been working out. Okay, just a little bit more."

"Let me guess," Hal managed. "Your car is the black one."

"Grey interior," he said. "I like to mix it up. You know," and Bruce was definitely wheezing a little bit, "most people, after suffering a catastrophic injury, tend to lose a little muscle density. No chance of that, I see."

Bruce clicked something, and the door slid open—up, actually, like an 80s DeLorean. There was a flux capacitor joke in there somewhere, but Hal hurt too bad to make it. Bruce got him carefully in the car, and then lifted his leg for him, swung it into the car. Hal gasped and gripped the grey leather upholstery, so soft it was probably made from fetal giraffe skins or something. 

"Sorry," Bruce said. "No help for that part, I'm afraid."

"'S okay. The pain meds—" Hal reached for the glove box, but Bruce shook his head.

"I was lying about that. It was the best way to convince you to get in my car."

"Oh my God," Hal said weakly. "You're like every bad video from my Health class come to life, aren't you? Do I need to be afraid here? Should I call a buddy?"

"Oh, shut up," Bruce said, slamming the door on him. 

Hal let his head tip back against the seat as Bruce went around to the driver's side and climbed in. "What, no driver?" Hal asked. 

"Not tonight. There's a Mapp and Lucia marathon on, and Alfred didn't want to miss it."

Hal tried to choke out a laugh. He kept twisting his hand on the butter-soft upholstery to keep from crying out. "Quickest way to my place is on the I-64," Hal said, as the car zoomed out into traffic.

"Mm. Your apartment is on the third floor. How exactly do you plan on managing that tonight?"

"No worries," Hal said. "I'll sleep in the back of my car. I do it every now and again, if it's hurting too much."

Bruce glanced at him, and quietly swore a string of curse words so filthy Hal was surprised he knew them, and those were just the ones that had been in English. "You're not going to your apartment," Bruce said.

"Okay, but—hey, how do you know my apartment is on the third floor?"

Bruce was silent. "No, but actually," Hal said. "Does Batman come visit all our apartments at night and watch us sleep?"

"Let's leave your sexual fantasies out of this," Bruce said. Hal tried to laugh. 

"Oh okay, right," he said. " _You_ dress in black leather and hip boots, but it's other people who have the problem with sexual fantasies. If you weren't—" He wrenched his head to the side as another spasm worked its way through his leg. "God fucking dammit," he panted. "Jesus Christ." His worst case scenario was unfolding, because he could feel the wet behind his eyes, and then a thin humiliating streak was working its way down his face.

"Fuck," he said softly.

The hand that had rested on his leg before was back, and Hal gripped it again, without shame this time. _Both hands on the wheel_ , he ought to say, but it would take a braver man than he to correct Batman's driving, and besides, the hand felt so good, so steadying, to have something human to hold onto. He was so tired of spending his nights with his arms wrapped around himself, clutching at his own shoulders to try to hold back the pain. 

"Hal," Bruce said, the quiet voice again. "When do you go see your doctor again? You need to let them know that this level of pain. . ." There was probably more; Hal got the impression there was more. Certainly that soft, steady voice kept talking. But Hal couldn't make out any of the words. He slipped into blackness, finally and blessedly passing out.

* * *

He woke in a warm bath. Or at least, that was what it felt like. It felt like there was something warm encasing all his limbs, and they were curiously light. He blinked, squinted, tried to focus.

He was in some sort of bed, and he was in the Batcave. He had only been here a couple of times, and he had never really had the chance to lie back and take it all in. Some beautiful tech in here; he could only imagine how many millions in technology was sitting in this place. And then there were some odder, more inexplicable things. It was like being inside Bruce's head, and that was an uncomfortable place to be. 

"You're awake," Bruce said. He rolled his chair into Hal's field of vision. He wasn't in his tux anymore, but a soft gray T shirt, his arms bare.

"This place is fucking weird," Hal said, and Bruce gave a wry smile. 

"You're a little high right now."

"You are also really fucking hot."

" _Very_ high," Bruce amended.

"What the hell did you give me?"

"This strange magical elixir," he said, "called adequate pain medication. How do you feel?"

"Amazing," Hal said. And it was true. He had forgotten what it felt like, to feel no pain anywhere. It was as though every muscle in his body had relaxed, and he hadn't realized how present that constant tension was, and how exhausting, until it had suddenly stopped. Like a droning TV in another room, and someone had just flipped the switch to blessed silence. He glanced at the IV in his arm. Suddenly he was seized by panic. This would just make it harder when the pain came back, to have had this. "Okay, get it out," he said, snatching at the line. "I can't get used to this."

The grip on his arm was iron, holding him in place. "You touch that IV," Bruce said, "and I will do something really painful to you, like mess up your hair."

"Ouch," Hal said, falling back on his pillow. He meant to stay awake, he really did, but when he opened his eyes again he was pretty sure he had napped for a while. Bruce was wearing a black T shirt now. 

"You changed," Hal said.

"It's Thursday."

"On Thursdays we wear black?"

Bruce chuckled softly. "You saw the movie," Hal said, with a still-loopy smile. 

"I have teenagers," he said. "How are you feeling?"

"Pretty good. Did I really just sleep for twenty-four hours?"

"Twenty-six. When did you move to part-time at Ferris?"

Hal tried to clear his head. Bruce was asking him questions he had no business knowing the answers to, and doing it because he knew Hal was still out of it. Standard interrogation practice, but he felt too relaxed to care. "'Bout a year and a half ago," he murmured. "It just got to be too much, trying to fly full-time and still be on call for the Corps and the League. It seemed like a reasonable decision."

"Until you were injured," Bruce said, "because unless I miss my guess, your hours at Ferris were such that you were no longer eligible for benefits. Which meant no insurance, which meant that even though the surgeons on Oa might have stitched your leg together as best they could, you have no real medical care on this planet, and no way to fill those prescriptions you probably got from some doc-in-the-box. Why in the—" 

He turned abruptly away, and for a second Hal thought there was some crisis that was summoning his attention, until Bruce turned back to him, and Hal realized he had been getting control of himself. His voice when he spoke was more measured. 

"Why in the world did you not go to Leslie," he said. 

"I can't pull my weight with the League right now," Hal said. "When I'm—when I've recovered, I'll—"

"Here's what is going to happen," Bruce said. "Alfred is going to take over your medical care, and later today Leslie will be paying you a visit here, to assess how much damage you've managed to do. You'll be in physical therapy for at least six weeks, under Alfred's supervision, and I should warn you that he is neither kind nor merciful, when it comes to physical therapy. But he is good, and at the end of the six weeks we will see where you are, and where we go from there. In the meantime, rest, regular meds, and the occasional walk around the gardens. You and Netflix are going to become very good friends."

Now it was Hal who turned his head away. He bit his lip, and swallowed against the lump in his throat. Someone was stroking his arm, but it couldn't have been Bruce, Bruce didn't act like this. "You don't have to do this alone," Bruce said. "You never had to do this alone, you idiot."

"Sorry," Hal said, hating the choke in his voice. Bruce had gripped his hand, and Hal gripped back. _Don't let go don't let go_ was all he wanted to say, because somehow Bruce's irascible presence made all this bearable. But there must have been enough meds still in his system that he said it aloud, or some of it, because Bruce was lifting their joined hands, and wrapping his other hand around them.

"I'm not going anywhere," he whispered. 

"There is no scenario," Hal said, "in which I walk like a normal person again. I don't get the leg back."

"No," Bruce said. "But there is a scenario in which you are not in pain all the time, and in which your leg becomes an annoyance that you can deal with, a manageable part of your life instead of the dominating fact of it. That's a goal worth working toward. Hang on."

Bruce turned, his finger to his ear, because of course he had his comm in, when did he not? "Yeah," he was saying. "No, he's good. Everything's okay." A pause, and then: "Sounds good. Yeah. I agree." After another bit of listening, Bruce said, "You too," and signed off. 

Bruce turned back to him. "You rest a few more hours, and then you can field all the phone calls yourself. I'm tired of being social secretary for the League's most popular member."

"Barry?"

"Clark. He's five seconds away from showing up with a steaming gallon of Ma Kent's chicken soup. Farm boys believe in proper nutrition."

Hal nodded. Of course it wouldn't be Barry. He was embarrassed now that he had said that, but Bruce had deflected it, of course. Barry didn't know what to say to him, these days. Barry would visit, and sit in awkward silence, or talk loudly and rapidly about something at work, and then make excuses about having to leave. It was funny—you never could tell how someone would act, around a sick person. You would think easygoing Barry Allen would be great at something like that, and Bruce Wayne would suck balls at it, when in fact it was the exact opposite. 

Bruce was tending to some monitors now, or maybe he was only pretending to, to give Hal some space. Then he rolled his chair back to Hal and handed him something. "Here you go," he said. "I dug a tablet out of Damian's room, from underneath a stack of laundry that I believe might have been crawling across the floor in an attempt to escape. You can occupy yourself for a bit, while I get some work done over here."

"Thanks," Hal said weakly.

Bruce was still looking at him. "This gets better, all right?" he said. "I can promise you, it does. I don't promise a cake filled with rainbows and smiles, but I can promise, it gets better than this."

Hal laughed. It felt good to laugh again. "Jesus Christ, you are gonna have to fucking stop with the Mean Girls quotes," he said. "No one is ever gonna fucking believe me about this one."

"Nope," Bruce said. "They won't, at that." He turned back to his monitors, but they were close enough that Hal could still watch him. After a while Hal got bored, and picked up the tablet, browsing through a couple of windows. It was at least easier to concentrate than it had been before, when the pain had been a constant background noise. He scrolled through a couple of movie choices before he landed on a soothing nature documentary. Nothing with people in it, nothing that would require extraordinary levels of focus. Just animals being animals, and some bland calming narration.

After about twenty minutes, Bruce rolled back his direction, and leaned against the bed, watching with him. Hal propped the tablet where they could both see it, and together they watched: some African watering-hole at dusk, predators and prey gathered together. Hal was stretched out on the surprisingly comfortable med bay bed, propped up now. His hand was resting on the sheets beside him, and then he noticed Bruce's hand was resting next to his, on the covers. Not intruding, not pushing. Just there if he needed it. 

Silently Hal laced his fingers in Bruce's. Not the desperate, drowning-man grip of before. This was just a quiet resting, but something about it made it a little easier for Hal to breathe. His chest eased up, just that little bit, and he took in air like he hadn't in six long months. He sneaked a glance at Bruce, but he was apparently absorbed in the documentary, face impassive, like what was happening with their hands wasn't even happening. He couldn't help but wonder what that _you too_ on the phone with Clark had meant, and what Clark had said. Then he shoved it back down, because it was none of his business, after all.

"Things are not looking so good for that wildebeest," Hal said. 

"I thought it was a sable antelope."

"God Karen, you're so stupid."

Bruce's mouth twitched. "All right, fine," he said. "I give up. Queue up the goddamn movie. Might as well give into the inevitable."

Hal grinned, and flicked over to the screen he already had open. He hit play, and the screen lit up with Lindsay Lohan's face. Bruce snorted, but the hand stayed laced in Hal's. Hal got comfortable on his pillows, and Bruce propped his feet up, as the opening credits of what anyone would reasonably have to call the world's greatest cinematic achievement began to scroll on the screen. 

It was going to be an interesting six weeks.


	2. Chapter 2

At Hal's apartment, Bruce found what he knew he would find: nothing.

Nothing when he flipped on the light switch.

Nothing when he turned on the heat.

Nothing when he opened the refrigerator. 

He rifled through a few drawers, and flipped open the laptop sitting on the coffee table. Fully charged, so he must have taken it somewhere to charge it—most likely the coffee shop around the corner, which was probably where he soaked up signal. No passcode of any sort, which made Bruce sigh and grind his teeth. He opened a few folders on the desktop, just enough to give him the overall picture. 

It was funny; for a man whose fighting style was reckless in the extreme, and whose lack of organization or strategy in the field was enough to drive Bruce insane, his apartment was remarkably well ordered. Almost fanatically well ordered, in fact. His desktop was cleared of clutter, his icons perfectly aligned; his kitchen, though bare of food, was clean to the point of sterility; there were hospital corners on his bed, and the bathroom towels were stacked in order of ascending size. Was that the lingering influence of the military, or had that always been Hal?

His suspicion was, the latter, exacerbated by the former. He didn't know chapter and verse about Jordan's home life, but he knew enough to know it had not been a good one, and had definitely not been middle class. This sort of organization was a predictable response to early chaos. 

"Interesting," he said, at the bookcase in the living room. It appeared to be assembled from some library's fire sale, and if there was an organizing principle here, it escaped him—biographies of obscure celebrities nestled next to French structuralist philosophy, _How To Regrout Your Kitchen Sink_ abutting _A History of Pre-Raphaelite Art_. He shook his head and slipped the _Quantum Manifesto_ back between the poems of Gabriela Mistral and a German copy of _Interpretation of Dreams_. Jordan's mind was clearly a strange one.

He didn't linger. For one thing, the apartment was uncomfortably cold. It was downright freezing, in fact, and judging by the depth of cold in the sheetrock walls, the heat had been off for some time. "Idiot," Bruce muttered, locking the door behind him. 

Back in the Cave, it took him less than half an hour to get into Jordan's bank account. The trip to the apartment had been half-reconnaissance, half password search, and he had been a little disappointed to find that no detective skills were required for this one—there had been a document labeled "logins" stuck in his documents folder, and while it hadn't had his bank password in it, there had been enough personal information in it to make some reasonable guesses. He could have hacked his way in, but that was always messy and inelegant, like taking a sledgehammer to a thumbtack. Not that Jordan could afford thumbtacks, with that bank account balance.

He sat there and studied it for a while.

This part did actually require some detective work, but after a while at the screen, sliding into the backdoor of various databases, social media, and payroll records, he found the people he was looking for. Not even Hal Jordan could spend quite that much money on blow; he had figured there had to be something else, and he was correct. "Interesting," he said, squinting at the screen.

That was not the word he used when he confronted Jordan, however. The man was still sleeping on one of the medbay beds when Bruce tossed the manila folder on his blankets. "Idiot," he said tersely. Jordan blinked at him, a bit groggily. For a half second, he almost felt guilty.

"We ought to move him to an upstairs bedroom," Alfred had said this morning. "One he can navigate with ease, of course. He should be fine without the IV by now."

"Yes," Bruce had said. He hadn't told Jordan the whole truth about the IV, of course. Most of it had been the medication he had needed so desperately, but he had also been severely dehydrated and in need of basic fluids. And judging from the way he was sleeping round the clock, the man had been sleep-deprived as well. _I sleep in the back of my car every now and again_ , he had said. The likelier picture was, he had been sleeping—or not—in his car for weeks now. 

Bruce and Alfred had studied him. "We can move him when he wakes up," Bruce had said. Well, he was awake now, if only barely.

"Idiot," Bruce repeated. Jordan was just blinking at him. "I went by your apartment," Bruce clarified, and now Jordan was definitely awake.

"You did _what?_ " 

"You've been drooling on my pillows for thirty-six hours, so I am uninterested in your righteous indignation. I'm guessing the heat has been off there for a good three weeks, and it's been almost that long since there was any food in that refrigerator."

"You had no right to—"

"You lost your benefits at Ferris Air when you moved to part-time, so that would mean no short-term disability. Your savings weren't large, but they should have been enough to sustain you over the last few months. If you had—"

"Ex _cuse_ me? What the _fuck_ do you know about my savings, and where the hell do you get off sticking your ass in my private business, are you fucking in _sane?_ " He was sitting all the way up now, and breathing hard. 

"Getting into your bank account was hardly a challenge."

"You asshole," Jordan panted. He was actually trying to get up. He was pulling his leg over the side of the bed and looking around like he might be trying to find his clothes. "You had no right—my life is none of your—" He was clearly overtaken by a wave of dizziness, and staggered a bit. Bruce gripped his arm.

"Let go of me," he said through gritted teeth. 

"I'll be happy to let you drop to the floor in a minute. But you're an idiot. You've starved yourself and ignored your own bills so you could continue to make monthly payments you can no longer afford. What exactly was your plan for this next part, now that you've run through all your savings?" 

"You don't know jack shit about me," he said. His voice was pure hate. 

"Don't I," Bruce said grimly. He eased his grip, and Jordan sat on the bed. He was rubbing his leg. He had probably managed to wrench hell out of it again, so he was ungrateful as well as an idiot. 

"I have responsibilities," Jordan was saying. "Responsibilities you don't know anything about, responsibilities that I—"

Bruce flipped open the manila folder on the bed, and Jordan froze. They were school pictures of Brinley and Brayden Caldwell, ages 11 and 6, respectively. Brayden's grin was huge and toothless, but Brinley's awkward large-eyed stare behind her glasses was truly unfortunate. School photography companies were not known for spending money on computer security, and these had been easy enough to find. There were pictures of their mother, too, from her last employee ID badge at Walgreens, and Bruce had stared at the picture for some time, trying to puzzle out any resemblance to Hal. He hadn't been able to see it, but there was something in Brinley's defiant jaw that looked familiar. 

"Why wouldn't you come to me," Bruce said, more quietly. "You have no problem hitting me up for strippers at Oliver's bachelor party, but you won't come to me for help with something like this?"

"This is my family, and my responsibility." Jordan wasn't looking at him. "You don't. . . understand."

"Yes, family responsibility, what would I know about that. Come on, get back in the bed."

"I'm fine," he said, but his voice was taut. There was something off. Thirty-six hours of meds, rest, and nourishment, and Jordan looked. . . not significantly better. Maybe it would take a few more days; maybe the damage he had done in the last few weeks was worse than Bruce had thought. But the extent of Jordan's pallor surprised him. 

Jordan was leaning back against the pillows now. His eyes were shut. "My sister," he said. 

"Half-sister," Bruce said.

"She's my fucking sister, asshole, and that has nothing to do with DNA. Just how many of your sons are related to you by blood, again?"

Bruce acknowledged the justice of that, and held his peace. "She was older than me," Jordan said. "By quite a bit. She was out of the house by the time things got—" He looked like he hadn't meant to say quite so much, and abruptly stopped. "Anyway, she looked out for me when she could," he resumed. "She was pretty much the best thing going in my life, when I was growing up. So yeah, she and the kids are in a bit of a rough patch right now, but things will get better, and until then—"

"Until then, the Caldwells will be well provided for, you have my word. In fact, your recent promotion has meant a substantial increase in the monthly amount you're wiring them, as it turns out."

"My recent promotion," he said. "Bruce, I can—I can look after my own family, all right? I don't need you to—"

"Maybe not," Bruce said, closing up the folder. "But that's what's going to happen. I take the idea of the Justice League seriously. We look out for each other, and if we intend to fulfill our responsibility to the rest of the planet, we need to first fulfill our responsibility to each other."

"Oh I see," Jordan said. "Today's lesson on sharing brought to you by Kimberly the Kindergarten Teacher, whom you might recognize from her recent appearances as Batman, the sociopathic loner."

Bruce snorted, and reached for Jordan's hand to re-insert the IV into the shunt. Or. . . that had been what he was going to do. But Jordan thought he was doing something else. Jordan's hand clasped his. So Bruce used his other hand to re-insert the IV, and clasped Jordan's hand back. He beat down another surge of anger, at this evidence of the man's loneliness. Jordan's injury had been four months ago. Barry and Oliver must have seen him several times a week, on average; as his closest friends they had to have had front row seats to Hal's increasing pain and floundering. But they had been blind to it.

 _Or_ , said another voice. _Or he is enough like you that he worked fanatically hard to hide it from everyone, until he no longer could._ He remembered the way Jordan had sat at that banquet, white as a sheet and clearly in pain that would have made someone with a normal pain threshold pass out, determined that no one should know. Ashamed, almost, that anyone should know. And that was another piece of the puzzle, along with the schizophrenic book collection and the freeloading sister: the instinctive shame at having needs, at being anything less than some one-dimensional cartoon hero. There was a steel-spined bull-headed pride, coded deep in the bones of this apparently heedless man, and though Bruce had feigned puzzlement that Jordan had no problem asking for money to pay strippers but would starve to death before he would ask for money to help his family, in truth, he understood that well enough. Understood and respected it. 

Jordan's eyes were drifting shut again. He wouldn't say thank you, and that was another thing Bruce understood, but the hand that clasped his was saying it. The fingers loosened a little as he slipped into sleep; the drugs must have hit him by now. Something strange squeezed Bruce's chest as he watched him sleep, something that wasn't the anger of before, or the puzzlement or frustration. He let his thumb stroke the inside of Jordan's wrist.

"I think perhaps the downstairs bedroom," Alfred said behind him quietly, and Bruce hid his startle. He had not been paying attention, too absorbed in watching Jordan; still, it was alarming that Alfred could get the drop on him like that. As he aged, Alfred was moving ever more quietly, and Alfred's aging—that was another thing that made his chest contract with that emotion somewhere between tenderness and terror. 

"Yes," Bruce said. "That way he won't have to bother with the elevator. And it should be quiet enough, over by the conservatory. Will you see that it's prepared?"

"Already done, sir. I trust you brought some clothes from his apartment?"

"I brought a few things. They're in the bag over there. Just buy whatever he doesn't have." 

"Very good, sir. Shall we go ahead and shift him then?"

"No," Bruce said. "Let him sleep a bit more."

"Of course, sir." Alfred was gone as quietly as he had come. Bruce realized he had not let go of Jordan's hand, but that was the sort of thing Alfred would not remark on.


	3. Chapter 3

"Bruce. What are you doing?" Clark said. He was leaning against the kitchen counter, watching Bruce.

"Waiting for Leslie to finish her assessment," Bruce said. 

"No. I meant. . . Bruce. Come on. What are you doing?"

He had lowered his voice, and as always, Bruce suspected him of manipulating it in a way untrackable by human ears. The resonance had shifted, just slightly. Keyed to the pitch of _come on Bruce this is me_. It would be unspeakably irritating, if it weren't so effective. Unspeakably irritating because it was so effective. 

"I'm helping Hal," he said. "I wasn't aware that what I was doing required explanation."

Clark was still just looking at him, in that way he had. He was dressed in soft sweatpants and an old T shirt, and his eyes were half-hidden under a battered Jayhawks cap, but they missed nothing. "Helping Hal by taking him into your house," Clark said softly, and Bruce turned his head.

"That's enough," he said.

"So we're not talking about it now?"

"When were we ever talking about it? And talking about what? There isn't anything to talk about."

"Okay," Clark said just as softly. 

"This is the best place for Hal to recover. Or maybe you would prefer his third-floor, no-elevator apartment? Where he lived when he was refusing all medical care or assistance, and sleeping in his car? The man is an even bigger idiot than I thought."

"Okay," Clark said again. "You're worried about Hal, I get that. But I'm allowed to be worried about you."

"Don't be ridiculous," he said sharply. 

"Okay."

"Please stop saying that. 'Okay' is an expression of assent. When you say it, it means anything _but_ assent. It's a little too early in the morning for the Midwestern passive-aggression, if you don't mind."

"O— all right."

He was silent for a minute, just watching Bruce. "How is he?" he said after a while. 

"That's what Leslie is here to tell us."

"I don't mean physically."

Bruce shrugged. "He's resilient. He'll be fine." It was a blatant lie, and one he was sure was obvious to Clark, but he didn't feel like telling Clark the truth. Besides, it was an irritating question. How would any of them be, facing permanent disability? What did Clark really expect? "He's in pain," he said finally. "More than Alfred thinks he ought to be."

Clark was nodding thoughtfully. "You're keeping him well medicated?"

Bruce narrowed his eyes. If you didn't know Clark, you might have missed it. "Say what you mean to say," he snapped. 

"I just meant—I didn't mean anything. I was just thinking, given his history. . . it's not unreasonable to ask, I mean. I was just. . . forget it."

"You're raising the possibility that he's drug-seeking."

"No, not really. Forget I said it."

Bruce watched him. He was careful to say nothing for a few minutes, because he didn't want Clark to see his anger. His rage, really. Clark didn't know. Clark couldn't know. Clark hadn't seen Hal, the last two weeks, struggling to mask his pain, to hide it, to keep from them the full extent of it. Clark hadn't been there three days ago, when he had found Hal bent double in the bathroom, gripping the sink white-knuckled, arms shaking, vomiting from the pain. Drug seeking? The problem was getting Hal to take the meds, not keeping them away from him. _Given his history_. For God's sake.

"Worried about me," Bruce snorted. "Nice to know your superpowers of worrying about exactly the wrong thing are still intact."

"Nice to know your superpowers of being an ass to people because they tell you things you don't want to hear are still intact."

"Children," Leslie said, from the doorway, and Bruce grimaced. Clark ducked his head, clearly abashed in a way that made Bruce want to slap him. 

"What can you tell us?" Bruce asked, and he didn't need to hear her deep intake of breath to know the news wasn't good. Her eyes were on Clark, however.

"Hal has given me permission to discuss any of my findings with Bruce and with Alfred," she said. "I didn't know you were here, and I'm sure Hal wouldn't mind, but I'd prefer if—"

"Of course," he said hastily. "Sure. I'll take off." And he headed out the back door, but not without a quick slide of his hand on Bruce's shoulder, which was meant to be both farewell and apology, he knew. Clark was free with his apologies, which was probably why their friendship had survived so long. 

"Not good news then," Bruce said, and she shook her head. 

"He's not healing like I would expect. The scans are. . . surprising. I can't find anything suspicious; it's just that the injury looks like it happened a week ago, not four months. The bone shows almost no signs of knitting together at either of the fracture points. Some, but not much. If his body is in fact healing, it's at an enormously decelerated pace."

"What's your theory?"

"Well, unsurprisingly, I have one."

"Let's hear it."

"There's a possibility a retrovirus might have been introduced to his bloodstream when he was hit, and it's slowing his recovery. I can't find any evidence of that, but I'm not sanguine about my ability to locate and identify extraterrestrial viruses anyway. It could be we simply don't have the equipment to find what we're looking for. I can work on refining some of the scanners I've got, now that I have a suspicion what I should be looking for."

"All right."

"The best case scenario is, I'm right, and we locate whatever is slowing his recovery at the same time we discover how to treat it."

"And the worst case scenario?"

"The worst case scenario is, we locate what's wrong but can't fix it, and his leg remains unusable. Which is not such a worst case scenario as all that; thanks to the League, I have access to tech I couldn't have dreamed of just ten years ago, and I could conceivably replace Hal's femur with a titanium alloy light enough and strong enough that he would barely notice the difference."

"And what's the argument for not doing that right now?"

"'Barely' is not the same as not noticing a difference at all. Even our best tech would still leave him. . . impaired. If there's a chance his bone can heal, I want to do everything I can to make that happen."

Bruce grunted in answer. He was still leaning on the kitchen counter, arms crossed. But Leslie would know his frown was not for her. "His pain," he said.

"Yes. I know, I'm concerned too. Bone pain can be agonizing, but I don't have to tell you that. Alfred is doing the right thing, and of course he can increase it as he sees fit, as much as is safe. My concern is that Hal has lost enough weight in the last four months that we will need to be careful about dosing."

"He's resisting medication," Bruce said. 

"Any idea why?"

"Yes," he said, but didn't offer more. And what could he say, really? It wasn't as simple as Clark would make it, that it was about Hal's past — and wasn't that quite the punch in the gut, that Clark had read through his heavily encrypted private files on members of the League. That little bit of information was not one Bruce would willingly have shared with anyone, even at his moments of greatest irritation with Hal. 

"Thank you," he said to Leslie. She was looking like she was considering saying more, but then she often did. He showed her out and made polite conversation with her about things at Gotham General, and what she might need in terms of equipment upgrades, and possible expansion of the Watchtower's facilities. He thanked her for her time, and for her frank assessment, and he watched her drive down the long graveled driveway to the front gates, still lost in thought.

Of course, that wasn't the worst case scenario, as she well knew. But she knew he knew it, so she hadn't needed to say it. That was the great thing about Leslie.

* * *

"Hit me," Damian said. 

"No, no, _no_ ," Hal said. "For fuck's sake, have I taught you nothing?"

"Sir," Alfred remonstrated from across the room.

"Right, sorry, I mean — for gosh sakes, kid, I'm not just talking to hear myself think. You got a jack and a seven, pay attention to the cards here."

"I am paying attention! You're just an inadequate teacher."

"Oh I am, am I. Listen, Shortwings, I was dealing seven-card draw when your daddy was sipping Shirley Temples at the club, so I think you'll just be walking that one back."

The tiny scowling ninja sitting across from him frowned, and concentrated on his cards. The kid had a quick eye for cards, but he played with a kind of terrifying ferocity. He wondered if this was what baby Bruce had been like, and he had even asked Alfred about that a few nights ago. Somehow Alfred always contrived to be in his room right about the time he was going to bed, so he was spared the humiliation of asking for any help, but apart from the much appreciated help, Alfred made some decent company.

"The kid's a handful, huh?" he had said, as Alfred was helping him get the leg hoisted onto the bed. Mainly he had said it to cover his wince.

"Indeed sir," Alfred had said. "But much improved, if you'll credit it."

"Hah. I've never been so afraid of someone under four feet in my life, so I'll take your word on that. Must remind you of having Bruce around, when he was that age." And to his surprise Alfred had looked up from straightening the blankets at the foot of the bed, his face dead serious.

"No sir," he had said. "Not in the least. They are very different. Master Bruce was a very quiet young man, very sensitive. He couldn't bear for anyone to be sad. And he always hated competition. Hated games, especially with other children."

"Maybe he just hated other kids." 

Alfred was looking at him curiously. "You don't understand him," he said.

"It was a joke," Hal said. "A lame one. Hey, get it? All my jokes are lame now. Buh dum-dum."

"Of course sir," Alfred had said, and Hal had given up. Maybe it was the talk of games that made him think of it, but when he found the deck of cards in a desk drawer he had decided to see what Damian would think of a little poker. It was a rainy day, and they were in one of those giant rooms at the back of the house with enormous wet-streaked windows looking out on the lawn, and with his leg propped on another pillow-banked chair, he actually felt pretty good. The added benefit to a lazy afternoon of cards was, no one had to notice if he stayed immobile as much as possible.

"Read them and cry," the kid announced, spreading his cards, and Hal rolled his eyes. 

"Read 'em and _weep_ ," he corrected. "We have got to work on your vernacular. You're spending too much time with your English homework."

"No danger of that, I think," Bruce said from the doorway. He was leaning there like maybe he had been watching for some time. "And speaking of. Upstairs with you, you've got work to do."

"One more hand, Father," Damian said, which pleased Hal — he must be getting on better with the kid than he had thought. Or the kid just really hated homework. 

"Patrol tonight," Bruce said, "so work now. Come on, upstairs with you. You'll wear out Captain Jordan, and then he won't be able to help me with this case."

Damian grumbled his way out of the room, muttering in what Hal was sure was Arabic, which Bruce appeared to ignore. "Deal you in?" Hal said.

"I'm more of a mahjongg man. I was serious about helping with a case, by the way. I'm not undertaking the care and feeding of a Green Lantern for free. I'm hoping your ring can help me with some chemical analysis shortcuts, down in the Cave."

"Sure, _Captain Jordan_ lives to serve."

"Your name irritates you?"

"Hal is just fine."

"Teaching respect is not some form of child abuse. And he's ten, time enough for you to be Hal when he's older." 

Hal shuffled and re-shuffled the cards, letting them riffle through his fingers. Mainly it was a distraction from the pain, which had decided to wake up and fuck him in the ass. Of course he couldn't manage to keep the damn bottle in his pocket, and of course every hallway in this house had to be eight miles long. He kept his eyes on the cards.

"Alfred," Bruce said. "Will you go make sure Damian hasn't taken an xbox detour on the way to his math homework?"

"Of course, sir." 

Hal laid out a desultory game of solitaire and studied his crappy hand. Wasn't that some kind of metaphor. Bruce was watching over his shoulder. "I offered to deal you in," Hal said. "And now you want to kibitz."

"You need to lie down," Bruce said. It wasn't the same voice from before. It was much quieter, and Alfred couldn't have heard it even if he'd been in the same room.

"Yeah, I know. Just putting it off. Moving the damn thing is not my favorite activity."

"I know. Let me bring you the meds."

Hal didn't object, and he knocked back a handful when Bruce brought them. Bruce's quiet watchfulness was beginning to irritate. "So," he said. "You wanna get started on this case?"

"The case will keep until after you've rested. You're putting off shifting your leg."

"Yeah," Hal sighed again. "All right, toss me the cane. Here goes nothing." He took his time stacking his cards and tidying the table, just to give the meds time to hit his bloodstream, and he could feel the red edge of pain recede a little bit — or enough where he could manage to hoist himself, like some sad ungainly duck, to his feet. Bruce's hand was on his back, steadying him. 

"You let Damian wear you out," he said.

"It was fine." His bedroom wasn't that far away, just down the main corridor and to the left, and he was grateful that at least they hadn't parked him five floors above. He was halfway there when disaster struck, and it wasn't even the pain. He was getting used to the pain, and it almost never caught him off guard now. This was different — this was his leg just buckling underneath him. It was like it just stopped working, like whatever delicate negotiation of tendon and ligament had agreed to keep him more or less upright had just said nope, no way, forget it, fuck you, and he went down hard and completely without warning.

Or would have, had Bruce not caught him. "Fuck," Hal breathed.

"I've got you."

"What the hell—it just—"

"Can you move?"

"No, I can't—it won't—"

"Okay, hang on." 

" _Fuck_ —"

Bruce got Hal's arm looped around him and half-walked, half-dragged him the rest of the way to his bedroom. Hal tried to help but was probably just making it worse. "Okay, wait, time out, hang on, I need a break," he panted. Bruce propped him against the wall, a little unceremoniously, but keeping Hal's right side firmly supported. "I'm sorry. Jesus Christ, it just gave on me, I don't know what happened."

"It's fine. You're over-relying on muscles that are exhausted. Let's just get you to bed."

"You're always saying that, but never in the fun way."

Bruce just blinked at him. "Whoops," Hal said. "That was my out-loud voice, wasn't it. Oh well. I actually think I'm better. I can probably—" And he tried a step out from the wall, only to sink like a rock.

"I've said this before," Bruce observed. "But you really are more solidly built than you look."

"Oh, I bet you—say that to—all the girls," Hal panted, as Bruce got him through the doorway and heaved him onto the bed. Maybe this would actually be hurting, if he hadn't taken all those meds. He shouldn't have taken so many. "Jesus Christ, why is every bed in this place like eight feet high? What the fuck is up with rich people aesthetics?"

Bruce swung his legs over for him. The meds were a good thing, because without them he would be realizing how massively he had just humiliated himself. He was pathetic. Some pathetic piece of half-person, some—no, wait, it just got better. Yes, actual tears, that would be better, let's do that now, yes please and thank you. 

Bruce was pulling the blanket up over him, slipping off his shoes. Hal pressed the heels of his hands into his eyes and tried to push back the wetness at his eyes and also erase the last few minutes in which he had just collapsed on top of Bruce, let him carry him — yet again — and topped it off with _coming on to him for Jesus fucking fuck's sake_ but apparently he wasn't done yet, because tears. A fucking plus. 

"Get some rest," Bruce said softly. "I'll have Alfred bring a tray. Come down to the Cave if you feel like it later on, and we can get some work done."

"Yeah, okay, awesome," Hal said behind his hands. He could just keep them there, for the rest of his life, and maybe never have to look at Bruce again. When he heard the soft click of the door, he put them down, and stared instead at the ceiling, and the little plaster rosettes on it. 

"Nicely done, _Captain Jordan_ ," he remarked to no one in particular.

* * *

Bruce made it up to his bedroom and shut the door behind him as quietly as he had shut Hal's two floors below, and then he pressed his forehead against the door. Pressed it hard and then harder, and then hard enough to bruise. 

What an idiot he was. He had stood in that kitchen and told Clark he was being ridiculous, that there was nothing to worry about, that of course everything would be fine. But Clark had known the truth, and that was the worst of it, that what he had thought was so well hidden was plain for Clark to read. Wasn't that one more knife in the gut.

He could still feel Hal's weight in his arms, the lean contour of his body pressed against Bruce's. The warmth of Hal's breath against his neck. And all he had wanted — God forgive him, all he had wanted was to climb on that bed next to Hal and rut on top of him, just unzip himself and climb on him and rub his cock on every inch of that glorious body and shove his cock into that fucking smart mouth and cum and cum and just cum for days, all the pent-up longing of how long was it now? How long could you long for what you would never have, what wasn't for you to have?

The man was a guest in his home. A guest — and here was the thing — completely dependent on him, for now. A guest who might not feel able to put a restraining hand on his arm and say, um, no thanks, I'd really rather not. 

Clark seriously thought he would lay a hand on a guest in his own home?

 _But you would_ , said the voice inside him. _Oh, but you would. If you thought you could get away with it._

He was hard now, just thinking about it. He had been eager to get out of that room, before Hal had realized just how hard. He fell onto his bed, telling himself he was going to try to take a nap before a hard evening's work, but he was lying to himself, that wasn't what he wanted at all. That wasn't what he was going to do. He had popped his fly and gotten a hand on himself, and oh God yes, right there. Right there. 

He rolled over and just let himself fuck the mattress a little, because fuck but he needed to fuck something. And he hated himself just that little bit more, because part of him — a large part of him — was already thinking how he might drop Damian in a secure location later on tonight and see if he couldn't find Selina, and she wouldn't ask questions, she never did. She would let it be as rough as he needed, she would let him turn her around and take her against a wall, and he was a piece of shit, he was filth, he was—

Coming between his hand and the mattress, choking his release in hoarse grunts of pleasure. 

He rolled over and stared at the ceiling, breathing hard, his hand and cock and bed a mess. 

No, no problem here at all. Everything was just fine.


	4. Chapter 4

He floated up from the warm weightlessness and swallowed air. It was dry in his throat. He coughed, and a styrofoam cup of water was pressed to his lips. That must mean his eyes were open. There was an arm helping him raise up a little — Alfred. Leslie was beside his bed, and there was a warm circle of light. Some more people standing just outside the light. Or one black turtleneck, brooding enough for several people. 

"Biopsy," he whispered. 

"Yes," Leslie said. "You did beautifully."

He drank the rest of the water and tried to figure things out from the faces around him, but they were all blank. And then Bruce stepped into the light, and met Hal's eyes, and he knew. He tried a halfhearted aim at the trash can with the styrofoam cup. "That great, huh," he said.

Leslie was putting some images up on the lightboard. Not x-rays. MRIs, maybe? The room was still quite a bit spinny, and he eased a bit lower in the bed. He fucking hated anesthesia. At least they had been able to do this here in the Cave, and not at some godforsaken hospital. "The biopsy was a success," Leslie was saying, "in that it told us what we needed to know, not in that it had good news for us. But in a way, it is good news — now we have a plan of action, and a possible solution."

He was still watching Bruce, whose impassive face was still watching him. _Sick people don't get better the more you scowl at them_ , he considered saying, but Leslie was still talking. "Your right femur proved highly anomalous," she said.

Alfred had replaced the water, and he drank more gratefully. "That would be medical speak for fucked up?"

"Yes. It. . ." And he saw her hesitate for the first time. "Its consistency was not what I expected."

"Its consistency?"

"Yes. It proved highly unstable. In fact I had to end the procedure before I did more damage."

"Okay," he said. He hadn't even looked at his leg, but he studied it now, or as much as he could see from this angle. It was in an iron cage sort of thing, a halo locked in place over it. Someone really did not want that leg to move.

"It had granulated," Leslie said. "Upon exposure to air."

"It. . . what?"

"The bone." There was a tightness around her mouth. No one in the grim circle around his bed was moving. There was someone moving around in the shadows behind Bruce. Was that Dick? 

"There is a reactive agent in your bloodstream, quite possibly in your marrow, that is literally unmaking the molecular structure of the bone. I wish I knew how to reverse its effects, or what was causing it, but I don't. The best course of action is going to be immediate surgical removal of the bone."

"Okay," he said. "Ah. Won't I. . . . be needing that?"

"We can replace it. There are any number of alloys we could use, and with the League tech at my disposal, your leg would function in almost all respects like a femorally intact limb."

A femorally intact limb. That was one hell of a euphemism. "Almost all respects," he said. He hadn't meant his voice to sound quite so hoarse. The room was still spinning. He really hated anesthesia. It was definitely possible he would be throwing up in front of all these people. That was a way he hadn't found to embarrass himself yet, so that was probably next on the list. 

"You would have some restriction of movement," Leslie was saying. "And the leg wouldn't be as strong as you're used to; it would require a brace to steady it and make sure it would be able to support your weight. But you might be able to maneuver perfectly well with just a light cane, eventually. We would start you on a wrist crutch, but with therapy other options are possible."

He blinked. "I don't. . . what are you. . ." He found Bruce's eyes again, just outside the circle of light. "Look, I'm not sure this is what I want to do, all right? Can't we just. . . give it some time here? What you're talking about sounds pretty. . .final. Maybe I could just sleep on it here, talk about some other ideas in a few days."

There was more silence, and then Bruce stepped into the circle of light. "Leslie," he said. "Would you give us a few minutes?"

Some more water was pushed into his hand, and then people were moving, the lights were shifting. Footsteps on the metal staircase, dying away. He was alone with Bruce, who was elevating the head of the bed a bit more. Yep, nausea definitely increasing. Pukeage imminent. He looked around for something he might throw up in. Bruce helpfully handed him a stainless steel basin. 

"I think. . . I'd like to go back upstairs," he said. "I just—I need to go lie down for a while."

"You should recover down here, where we have appropriate monitoring. Hal. This surgery Leslie described to you is not optional. It's what has to happen."

"Well. . . you don't actually know that. I mean, what, the theory is my leg got zapped with some sort of alien. . . virus, or. . ." What was the word Leslie had used? "A reactive agent, or something, and we don't really know how that works. So it could be the bone will heal up just fine, given enough time. I mean. . ."

Bruce was reaching into his pocket, and placing something on the table beside the medbay bed. It was a vial of something — a glass vial with a flat bottom and a screw-on top, and inside it was a grayish powder. Hal squinted at it. "That's the biopsy sample of your bone," Bruce said, quietly. "When Leslie said it had granulated, she meant it had crumbled to powder. There isn't anything left. This surgery has to happen immediately. Whatever is happening to your bone, we can't risk that spreading to the surrounding tissue."

Hal was still just staring at the little vial, and the gray powder inside it. Something in him really did not want to reach out and pick it up or touch it, at all, ever. "I don't understand," he said.

"Neither does Leslie. But understanding comes later, and treatment comes first. Leslie is going to call a transport from Gotham General, and we'll have you taken there within the hour. You can be prepped for surgery in the morning, or possibly later tonight."

"Jesus Christ," he said faintly. 

He tried to remember the last time he had flown. Was it five months ago, or six? Maybe longer. He had had to leave abruptly on the mission, he remembered that. Carol had been pissed. He had neglected his post-flight checks, he had been in such a hurry to get off the flight deck and off-world, to respond to the summons. _Slow the fuck down_ , he wanted to go back and say to himself. And now he couldn't really remember his last time on flight deck. Last time. The weight settled on him, the weight of knowing he would never again fly. Not real flying, anyway — not pulling g's and opening up the throttle kind of flying. And maybe not the other kind either, maybe not any of it, ever. Would the Guardians want their ring back?

"Hal." Bruce was by his head, his voice still quiet. "This has to happen."

"Right," he said. "Okay. Let's do this, then."

He caught the twitch of Bruce's mouth in a smile, and there was the pressure of a hand on his arm. "I'll let Leslie know," he said. 

"Wait," Hal said. "It's just—do you think we could. . . do this here, maybe?"

"Here?" Bruce was frowning.

"Yeah. I just really hate hospitals. Like, a lot. If there's any way we can just do it here, that would—that would really be great."

"This is a complex surgery. I'm not sure Leslie can. . ." Bruce went quiet. He wasn't sure he'd ever seen Bruce not finish a sentence before. He was studying something on the floor. "I'll ask her," he said. 

"Thanks," Hal said, sinking back into the bed. He heard Bruce's footsteps on the metal staircase leading out of the Cave, and he waited until he was sure Bruce was out of earshot before he leaned over and was quietly, profoundly sick into the steel basin.


	5. Chapter 5

"I think I need a larger sample." Hal was frowning into the petri dish, and the scouring light of his ring was illuminating the tiny sliver of metal. "I mean, it's not terrestrial, I can tell you that much. But not much more than that."

He swept the ring over it one more time, reading the quick scatter of symbols thrown up above. "Yeah, this isn't gonna tell us the provenance you want. You sure you found this in Gotham? Also, this isn't going to go any faster with you literally breathing down my neck."

He could feel the weight of Bruce's scowl behind him, as they bent together over the table in the Cave's lab area. "'Course I'm sure," said Jason's voice, from the other side of the Cave. Half the time Hal couldn't see anything down here — the Cave was lit by puddles of light, but the puddles tended to shift, and you'd be talking to someone and they'd slip into darkness only to emerge somewhere else, and every time you tried to find the bathroom you ran smack ass into a fucking T Rex. He was half convinced Bruce kept the damn thing on a rotating slide with a remote control, just to mess with him.

"Most of it exploded," Jason was saying. "Like it was meant to, on account of being a bomb and shit. That piece there came out of my neck."

"You weren't wearing adequate shielding," Bruce said. 

"Suck it," Jason said. "Says the man who exposes the lower half of his goddamn face on a regular basis. Someday soon your face is going to get blown off and we'll have to wire your jaw shut, but no one will be able to tell because you'll still just grunt when you want to say something."

"He always like this?"

Bruce grunted. Jason laughed, and Hal caught the quick flash of something in the dim light — a knife maybe, idly flipped in the air. 

"All right, I got places to be. Lantern, ping me if you find anything, yeah? And I'll see if I can maybe dig out a bigger chunk of that. With any luck I'm bleeding internally." He disappeared, only to reappear behind Bruce, his voice suddenly close and low. "Here is where you say, _I'm not that lucky_ , old man." And he slapped Bruce's shoulder. 

"Get Alfred to look at that wound. And watch yourself out there."

"Yeah, yeah." Jason was gone, slipping back into the shadows he had materialized from, and Hal returned to concentrating on the metal sample. If they could break it open somehow. . .

"Sit," Bruce said, toeing a stool his direction. Hal took it without thanks, still frowning at the metal. He was holding it with tweezers, because its core temp was still elevated, and that made him suspect some things he couldn't prove. He shifted his weight on the stool, and hoisted the leg to rest on one of the bars of the table. 

"Let me know if we need to take a break," Bruce murmured. 

"Nah, I'm good," Hal said. 

And the thing of it was, it was the truth. The surgery itself had been hell, but almost immediately afterward — almost the minute he woke up, in fact — he had been aware only of how much pain he was _not_ in. He had stopped realizing just how much pain he was in on a daily basis, like bad 90s pop constantly playing in the next room. You knew shit was bad when getting sawn open and having a metal tube stuck down you made you feel instantly better. 

Pretty soon he'd be able to move back to his apartment and get on with his life — or at least, move to an apartment. His old one, not so much. He was going to have to find something ground floor, or at least a building with an elevator, because one of those things Leslie had neglected to mention was that the fucking thing did not readily bend. Of course, that wasn't exactly her fault; apparently there had been damage to the joint and shinbone as well, so he had a few extra pins stuck in him, at least for now. Which meant stairs were not his favorite, at the moment.

Of course, there was the other consideration of what kind of apartment he could even afford. Funds were what you might call low, and though Carol had said she was holding a job for him, he hadn't had the courage to ask her exactly what kind of job that might be, or what the hell he was qualified to do other than fly shit across the sky. "That's great, thanks," he had said, and quickly got off the phone, his chest hammering. He would worry about an apartment soon, but in the meantime, being here at Wayne Manor wasn't so bad. Somehow there was always something going on, always someone to talk to, and occasionally even a project to help out with, like today. It made him feel a little less. . . useless.

"Sirs," Alfred said, from the doorway above. "May I remind you to keep an eye on the time?"

Hal looked up and squinted around for a clock. Who the hell knew what time it was down here? "Right," Bruce said. He did not sound pleased. "Of course. Thank you, Alfred."

"What's going on?" 

"Benefit tonight. The Manor's hosting, so I can't exactly be absent. It's the Wayne foundation's largest annual event."

"Oh yeah? Here?"

"Mm hmm. I'll have Alfred bring you a tux, in case you'd like to come take a look." 

"Huh. Probably pretty good food, yeah?"

"I would imagine. It always seems fine to me."

Hal gave a short laugh at that. Food for a party like that — Bruce was probably dropping tens of thousands of dollars, but he never even knew about it or much cared. "What's the band like? You know, in case I want to get down. Better not be one of those old-person swing bands."

"It's free food and women in low-cut dresses, are you really concerned about the ambience? Throw on something decent and come for a while. At least it will give me someone to talk to."

"Something tells me you'll find plenty of those. You ever invite any of the League to these things?"

Bruce grimaced. "It's bad enough that I have to go, I'm not torturing people needlessly."

"Except me, I see. All right, I'm in. As long as it doesn't cut into my Doctor Who marathon."

"I'll inform the band."

So that was how forty-five minutes later he was standing in front of the full-length mirror, checking himself out in a tuxedo. He did not look bad, he had to admit — not bad at all. Alfred even helped him with the doolollies on his cuffs and shirt, and opened a box with several different sets for him to choose from. He chose the simplest looking one, and Alfred murmured, "The onyx, excellent choice, sir," which probably meant it had been the most expensive. Hal regarded himself critically in the mirror. The leg draped enough that it hid the brace entirely except for the shoe, and the crutch did not entirely ruin the effect.

"Allow me, sir," Alfred had said, bending to help him with the shoes, which turned out to be an exact fit. Did rich people have tuxedo closets, with all this extra stuff just hanging in there, like regular people kept extra toothbrushes?

"It fits like it was made for me," Hal said, cocking his head at a person he did not entirely recognize. 

"Because it was, sir," Alfred said, a bit of reproof in his voice. " I hope you don't mind that I took the liberty of your measurements. Master Bruce ordered this tailored for you week before last."

"He did," Hal said. He studied himself in the mirror while Alfred fiddled with his cuffs. Well, wasn't that some interesting information. So Bruce had wanted him to come to this party. Had planned on it, even. Had wanted him to come, but hadn't wanted it to seem like he wanted him to. _Throw on something decent and come for a while_. So maybe it wasn't just all in his head, the way Bruce would stand so close sometimes, so close Hal could almost reach out and touch him. . .

It was a bad idea, of course. The mother of all bad ideas. It was a bad idea for about a thousand and nineteen reasons, but they were both big boys, and they were capable of separating a roll in the hay from the rest of their lives. It had been quite some time since sex, actual sex with another live human being, and yeah, sure, it felt pretty good to realize that having his leg chewed up and spit out for scrap didn't have to mean the end of that.

"Looking fly, Jordan," he said, giving his cuffs a tug, and he caught the quirk of Alfred's smile. Of course, he ruined it by overbalancing, because he had taken his hand off the crutch, but Alfred was there with a wordless hand on his waist, propping him back up. It was all good. He was back in the game.

* * *

He hadn't calculated, of course, just how interesting a disability made him, to a certain kind of person. To women, actually. All of them. It was just about the most awesome thing to happen in his life so far. 

"Excuse me," he had said, to a woman who was blocking his way near the canapé bar, and she had turned, glanced at the wrist crutch, and he had seen her eyes widen. 

"Oh, I'm so sorry," she had breathed, and then she had looked up to his face, and yeah, there it was. She smiled, just sort of melted — this warm, soft-at-the-edges, what-can-I-do-for-you kind of smile that, and let's just be honest, Hal Jordan without the crutch never got. Quickly he arranged a story in his head about being wounded overseas. Not technically untrue, from a certain point of view. 

They had talked for like twenty minutes. She had smelled amazing. She had maybe last eaten in 2011? He could only imagine how flexible she must be. She would be so tender and considerate of him in bed. And then a few more women had come up to talk to him, some friends of hers, and before he knew it, he was not having such a bad time. From his perch above, he caught occasional sight of Bruce, down on the dance floor, shaking people's hands, grinning like he never saw him in actual life. Of course, could be this was Bruce's actual life. 

"Alex, come meet Captain Jordan," the redhead (Michelle? Danielle? something like that) called to a blond man with a smile more expensive than one of Bruce's cars. His hair was almost longer than hers. He looked like some sort of Viking. She was stroking the Viking's arm as she pulled him over, so maybe one of the brunettes was going to be a better bet for him.

"How do you do," said the man. He had a faint German accent, and he squeezed Hal's hand to the point of pain. He always forgot to switch his ring to his left, in a social situation where there would be a lot of handshaking — that metal was hard as fuck. "You are military, yes?"

"Ah, yeah, I was. Air Force."

"Ah, ja? Were you ever stationed at Ramstein? It is quite close to my house."

"His house," Michelle said, with a pleasant laugh. "He means his castle. Or one of them, anyway. Hal, this is Prince Alexander von Baden-Wurlinz. Alex has been snatching up old chateaux for at least a decade now. So many of the old families just can't maintain them anymore, you know."

"Poor investors," Prince von whosen-whatsit said. "It is not my fault. But the architectural heritage must be preserved — we must have something like the National Trust, like what you have in Britain," he said with a wave of his champagne flute, as though Hal were somehow British. 

"And you'd be happy to sell to them at a tidy price, I'm sure," said Bruce's voice.

"Ah, jawohl, natürlich! But come, I am receiving lecture on my evil ways from you, old friend? I know far too much about the way Wayne Enterprises does business for that, I think!"

"Touché," said Bruce, with another of those wide fake smiles and hollow laughs. It made Hal want to check the windows for the peasants banging on them with pitchforks. 

"Arcadio, how wonderful to see you," Bruce said, as another man put a hand on his shoulder, and he was tugged away into another group. He would break free for a few seconds, Hal noticed, but always there was another group of laughing people ready to pull him back in, and Bruce was always at the center of some knot of people —his laugh louder, his smile brighter, his backslaps heartier, than anybody else's in the room. It probably made him want to shoot himself, if the steady downing of champagne glasses was anything to go by. The man could put it away. 

So Hal lost track of Bruce for most of the evening, spotting him only occasionally, but after a while Hal managed to ease his way down to the main level, where the ballroom was. He had had fun being the center of attention, but the band had started up in earnest now, and women were a lot less interested in chatting up an undance-able guy. Besides, he was kind of hoping he could spend some time with Bruce, now that Bruce had pressed the flesh from one end of the party to the other. Maybe Hal would begin with some suave line about the tux — _so you had this made just for me, huh?_ And maybe a line about his measurements in there somewhere, with some kind of innuendo. 

But there was no sign of Bruce anywhere, and Hal was starting to get irritated. He wandered the perimeter of the ballroom, looking for where all these glass doors must lead to. His leg was starting to protest, but he ignored it. 

Over at the other end of the ballroom he spotted Alfred, actually serving a tray. He wondered what the hell Alfred was doing, passing hors d'oeuvres like some lowly cater waiter, but then he caught Alfred's quick scan of the room from underneath hooded eyes and realized that of course, Bruce never relaxed surveillance, even on a party night. Alfred was his eyes and ears, here as everywhere. He laughed out loud at it, at all these mildly drunk, seriously rich, heavily surveilled people showing up to drop fistfuls of money for whatever charity Bruce told them to. He downed the last of his champagne, and reached for another one on a tray passing by.

And then he caught sight of Bruce — just a flash of dark hair going through one of the side doors, but it was enough. Too bad he couldn't manage to carry two glasses. No matter, he could say something like, _got this for you_ , and hand Bruce his. Hal followed him through the doorway and found himself in some sort of garden room. Strange to think he had been staying in this house for a month, and never really gone exploring. There were palms everywhere, and soft dim light, glass walls. Stone steps leading down to another level, and yep, there was Bruce.

He hadn't seen Hal yet — he was just standing there below, looking out one of the big glass panes, like he was lost in thought. _You're a hard man to track down_ , Hal opened his mouth to say, but closed it when the blond German prince stepped into his field of view, from the side. Hal hadn't seen him. Had he just come in another door? Hal frowned. He couldn't hear what they were saying. The man's hair reflected a golden shimmer from one of the windows. 

And then they leaned in to each other, and Bruce was kissing him. Kissing him. Hal froze on the steps. It was like his brain took a few clicks to process what he was seeing, and in those clicks, Bruce had managed to back the Viking into a wall. Bruce's hands were all over him. Fucking Thor was groping at Bruce like a middle schooler with his first stiff one. Like a man watching a knife slide slowly into his skin, Hal stood there and watched Bruce tip the other man's head back and suck on his jaw, his throat. 

Thor arched his neck, and groaned. But his eyes opened, and he turned his head, and his eyes met Hal's, and he smiled — a sly, knowing smile. Looked right at Hal, and smiled. The molten ash in Hal's stomach became a brick. 

He made his way out as quietly as he had come in, still gripping his useless champagne.

* * *

Back in his room, he undressed, and laid the lovely tuxedo out on a chair, with all the accessories arranged neatly on top of it. He swallowed a couple of pain pills, because his leg was screaming. He found himself at the mirror in his bathroom, staring at his reflection. Just his face. And then he got the courage to turn to the full-length mirror facing him, on the opposite wall. 

He was wearing only a T shirt and boxers, so his view was unimpeded, and he let himself look. He saw himself as Bruce must see him — saw himself as he truly was. Saw the ugly puckered furrow where Leslie had had to dig out muscle along with the bone, saw the scarring, the twisted cavity on his inner thigh. Saw the way his leg bent at an ungainly angle, like an awkward spider. Saw the way he had to clutch the bathroom sink to stand. 

And because there was no one like Hal Jordan for ignoring reality, he had actually thought, in his pathetic self-deluded egomaniacal brain, that Bruce was sexually interested in him. In reality, of course, he was just one more Wayne Foundation charity — just another reason to pass the canapés and Dom Perignon. In his sad fucked-up state, the one where he was doing anything but facing reality, he and Bruce were having some kind of. . . something. 

Bruce would laugh his ass off if he knew what Hal had thought.

Or worse, he wouldn't laugh. He would feel sorry for him, like he already did, like everyone in this whole house must. He met the eyes of the poor fuck-up in the mirror, and had never hated him more. Never really hated him until this moment, actually, because he had never really seen him. 

Before he knew he had done it, he had swung the crutch right at the mirror. It broke, right in the center, a shattered star where his face had been. He studied it a minute. And then he lifted the crutch like a stick, and swung again. And again. 

He did not stop until what was left of the mirror was a crunchy field of debris underfoot, and he was breathing hard. And then he saw his face in the mirror over the sink, and swung at that. 

"Shit," he panted, when his brain helpfully clicked back on. "Oh. . . shit."

He looked at what he had done, and it was like that time he had taken Buck's ATV out and wrecked it, and he had stood there at the top of the ravine looking down at five hundred pounds of twisted metal, and he hadn't been able to think or feel a thing beyond _holy shit holy shit holy shit_. Just a curious deadness. 

He tossed the crutch onto the floor and hobbled back into the bedroom, aware he was trailing bits of blood and broken glass. He hauled himself up onto the bed, and folded his hands serenely. There came a point when you had fucked up so bad, it brought a kind of peace with it, because you knew you couldn't fuck up any worse, and you thought, well, here I am. 

Here he was.


	6. Chapter 6

Bruce tapped his razor against the sink and studied his jaw. He scraped with the razor, gently upward — a long, slow, delicate swipe that ignored Alfred's quiet presence behind him. Alfred cleared his throat. Bruce dipped the razor in the sink.

"What is it?"

"Captain Jordan had a bit of an accident last night, sir."

Bruce's razor stilled. "What kind of an accident?"

"He. . . fell getting out of the shower. That was what he explained to me. He was quite apologetic."

"Is he all right?"

"Yes, sir."

Bruce lifted his razor again. Alfred was still standing there, which meant he had more to say. Bruce's head ached; he was now hours behind where he wanted to be with the analysis of that shrapnel and with the questions of alien provenance it raised, and last night had been time wasted, in more ways than one. He had a long day's work in front of him, and a longer night, and little patience with Alfred's complicated silences. But snapping at Alfred to get the hell on with it would only make it worse, and he'd be paying for it for days. 

"That's good, then," Bruce tried, and turned to the other side of his jaw. If only his head weren't pounding. He refused to acknowledge the possibility he might be hung over; he had carefully calculated the amount of champagne he was drinking, and it shouldn't have affected him like this. _You're getting old, Wayne_. He narrowed his eyes at his reflection.

"Yes, it's very fortunate he was not seriously injured," Alfred said.

"But," Bruce said, allowing a little of his impatience to seep through. 

"There's no but, sir."

 _Obviously there is, or you wouldn't still be standing there_. He sighed and started on the other side of his face. If he was getting old, it stood to reason Alfred was too. Within a few years they would have conversations punctuated by so many silences they would be unable to leave a room for days. He gave up and wiped his razor clean along with his hands, and turned to Alfred. So that was it. He had been waiting for his full attention. 

"I think, sir, you ought to take a look at Captain Jordan's bathroom."

He hadn't been expecting that, and he frowned. Moving his facial muscles hurt. "His bathroom?"

"Yes, sir."

Alfred met his eyes, and Bruce weighed what was there. "All right," he said. "I'll be down in a bit."

"Very good, sir. Your tray is by your bed. There is some sodium bicarbonate there as well; you might want to start with that."

"I'm not hung over," he snapped.

"Naturally not, sir."

Bruce scowled and tossed his towel into the bin, but Alfred had already turned and headed back down stairs, impervious as ever to any display of emotion on Bruce's part. He was a grown man, dammit, and allowed to display occasional irritation. Why was it that a single arched eyebrow from Alfred could make him feel like a tantruming child? 

If there were a galaxy-wide rhetorical question contest, he reflected, that one would win hands-down.

* * *

Bruce stood in the wreckage of the downstairs guest suite bathroom, and in silence he reconstructed. He didn't move, or touch anything, but his eyes tracked every bit of evidence. The first swing would have happened here, and then here. Wilder and less organized as he went on. Some shards had flown all the way across the room to the tub; Hal would definitely have cuts, and maybe some embedded glass. The mirror over the sink would have happened last. 

Finally, when he was certain he had reconstructed the chain of events, he reached out and touched the mirror, feeling its splinters beneath his fingers. Hal's agony of self-loathing hung in the room like a palpable miasma, and Bruce thrust his hand back in his pocket, fighting a churning tide of nausea. This was his fault — his fault because he had maneuvered Hal into going to that stupid party, where of course he had only felt out of place. But he had thought — he had really thought, when he had seen Hal in the center of that group of gorgeous women, that it was going well for him. And if he had had a stab of regret that they had been Hal's choice. . . well, there were remedies for that, and the world was full of warm bodies. 

He stood there for a few more minutes, arranging his thoughts. And then he went in search of Hal, but didn't find him anywhere upstairs — found him at last down in the Cave, and there, of course, was Damian as well, perched on a stack of unused steel crates, watching Hal. Something told Bruce his son might be marginally less interested in becoming Batman one day; the boy might have started setting his sights a bit higher, to judge by the way he stuck to the Green Lantern like glue. 

"Hey," Hal said, tilting his head back. "Good morning, lazy ass. Come take a look at this, I think I've solved our little mystery. Part of it anyway."

"You're sitting in my chair."

"And that really bothers you, doesn't it? Sit your ass on that stool, cripple gets the comfy chair." 

Bruce snorted, but pulled up a stool without objection, with a veiled glance at Jordan. The man was in uniform, interestingly enough, which he hadn't been in weeks. He appeared his usual unruffled self, down to the habitual smirk, with no visible cuts or scrapes from last night's misadventure. If Damian weren't here, he might confront him about what he had seen in the bathroom, but on the other hand, Bruce understood the need to move quickly past a paroxysm of emotion like that. Repression was an underrated coping mechanism. 

"So the rate of heating got me thinking," Hal was saying, pulling up some screens to show him. His deft command of Bruce's keyboard was a little irritating. "The sample's not large enough to show us exact provenance, but that heat retention was fucking bizarre. I've seen something like it, but that was on Caltron Four, like ages ago, and that's a totally peaceable system with limited trade contacts, right? But they had this metal that would retain heat for like literally forty-eight hours, once you got it to a certain temperature. I think the Caltronians used it for heating soup, who the fuck knows, but the point is, I know for a fact it's not native to the area. Take a look at this," he said, pulling up a map of some galaxy he clearly expected Bruce to recognize. 

Bruce considered correcting his language in front of Damian, but it would just make him sound like Alfred. The headache from before hadn't gotten better; it had only burrowed underground, where it was a dull hammer against the base of his skull. "Conclusion?" he said.

"Well," Hal said, stretching his arms behind his head. "Conclusion is, Caltron Four trades with a very limited number of worlds, and I think I can reconstruct all of them. If this metal is the same as that one, I think I might actually be able to track down provenance. Which means—"

"Which means you'll be able to tell if the alien tech has ended up here by happenstance, or something more sinister."

"Yep. Toss me that, kiddo." Damian pitched down a small curved scimitar with a blunt end, and Hal caught it one-handed. "Check it out, we had shop class this morning."

Bruce took it from him, examining it carefully. "You made this," he said.

"Yeah, based on the curvature of the metal, that could be what it's from. I mean, that would be the worst case scenario. I just wanted to see if that was right, if that little sliver would fit somewhere on there. I got the schematics from the ring."

"Interesting," Bruce said. 

"If by interesting you mean wicked as shit and liable to carve your spleen into ribbons, sure. Anyway, that's what the curve reminds me of, just that little sliver we've got."

Bruce turned the blunt object — something like a tiny elephant tusk — over in his hand, studying it. It was increasingly evident Hal had not gone to bed at all last night. He was leaning back in the chair a bit, massaging at his leg, which was propped on a stool. "So yeah," he was saying, "I've got a couple of programs running, cross-referencing Caltronian trade routes with Lantern intel, and in a couple of hours I might have some real answers for you about what the hell alien tech is doing in Gotham, and how it got here."

"Not bad," Bruce said. He was impressed in spite of himself. It almost reconciled him to the loss of his chair. 

"Yeah, don't hurt yourself there, acknowledging I actually know what I'm doing. As soon as we figure this out, I can get out there and knock some heads together about assholes doing business with restricted worlds in my sector."

"Get out there?" 

"Sure, as soon as I have something to go on. I mean, you got Gotham covered, I realize that, but my beat's a little bigger, and I need to get on it."

Bruce had to look at him to realize he was serious — just clicking away through a few more scans he was running, looking intent and focused and completely as though he meant what he had just said. The man was sincerely contemplating going out into the field, maybe as soon as in a few hours. "Damian," Bruce said. "Would you go upstairs and see if Alfred needs some help preparing a coffee tray for Captain Jordan?"

"I'm good, I don't need any coffee," Hal said.

"Damian," Bruce said.

"He's been pretty helpful down here, and I need to work on our model a little bit more. He can stay."

Bruce's minor irritation became a white-hot flare of anger, crackling his vision. He made eye contact with Damian, hovering uncertainly on top of the crates. " _Now_ ," he rasped, the single syllable conveying everything he needed it to, and Damian swung down with gratifying speed, taking the stairs four at a time.

"Don't you ever," Bruce managed, his jaw almost too tight for speech, " _ever_ , countermand my orders to my son again."

" _Countermand_ , seriously? You're a dad, not a commanding officer. Jesus Christ, what you don't know about kids would fill a book. How can you have like seventeen kids and still be so bad at this?"

Bruce schooled his breathing. "When I ask for opinions on parenting," he said, "I'll be sure to ask an unemployed childless bachelor how he thinks I ought to raise my sons, but until then you will shut your mouth when I tell Damian what to do. I am his father, but I am also his commanding officer, and his life depends on understanding both those things. Are we clear?"

That _unemployed_ was surely not what he had meant to say, and he saw it hit home in the sudden clench of Hal's jaw, the tightness around his eyes. Hal pushed back in the chair and swung his leg down, reaching for his crutch. "Get fucked, Bruce," he said, struggling up. "Oh wait, I forgot, you don't need any help with that, do you. So go shove some more Nazi cock down your throat until you choke on it, you self-righteous cunthole."

He left Bruce standing there frozen, his veins flattened beneath the firestorm of rage consuming him. He regained power of movement only after Hal had made his way to the elevator. He had swept the stack of steel crates to the floor with one powerful kick before he had even calculated the move, and he listened to their satisfying clatter against the stone, echoing down the long darkened caverns.


	7. Chapter 7

Bruce stayed in the cave the rest of the day, beating back his headache with some punching-bag rounds and deadlifts. He avoided meditation, which was his usual go-to for headaches, because in meditation it was impossible to escape oneself; there was a hard wall of reflection to be plowed through before you could arrive at the center, and he did not feel like too much close reflection today. Because while Lantern was clearly and obviously in the wrong, he himself could have been more. . . judicious in his approach. 

And perhaps taunting a disabled man with no longer having the job he had been rendered physically incapable of — when that job was all he had trained to do his entire life, and all he longed to do, and was written into his very being — perhaps, in retrospect, that had been less than wise. 

But it had been Hal who had first taunted him, who had insulted his fatherhood, had made a mockery of his authority in front of his son, had dared to call the foundation of his family into question. He, an interloper here, a guest, an intruder. And Bruce had caught that barest hesitation, when Hal had told Damian he could stay — Damian's eyes flicking to Bruce as though possibly Hal's orders stood in place of his. Months — years — of work with Damian, undone by Hal in a few careless moments. Not that the man knew or cared. 

Bruce pummeled the bag until the impact shocks shuddered his shoulders, and then he pummeled some more. 

_Shove some more Nazi cock down your throat_ , Hal had sneered. He would take whom he pleased to his bed, when he pleased, and he had long since done with shame of any sort. Jordan could take his homophobic contempt and stick it up his ass. He beat the bag of weighted sand into submission, and at every connection of fist with canvas he heard only _faggot faggot faggot_ until he ripped off his gloves and threw them across the room, and steadied himself on the swaying bag. 

In the evening he suited up for patrol, and he kept a weather eye on those scans that were still running. Hal came down to check on them, too, making his way to the monitor in dignified silence that ignored Bruce's presence. For a half-second Bruce contemplated reaching for him, though to do what he had no idea. He wondered if Hal's ring would raise a defensive construct before Hal even turned around. But then Damian's quick booted step clattering the stairs meant the moment was gone. 

"This is not good news," Hal said tersely, looking at the screen. 

"What did you find out?" This was good, this was fine, this was professionals being professional. _Self-righteous cunthole_ , Hal had called him. There had been such hate in his voice. 

"This," Hal said, clicking up the map. "Dammit. I was right, that's a fragment of a kimjar knife all right, but the worse news is this. It's got to be from here, see?" His finger tapped a speck on the star map. "That's the only place it can be, according to this program. And if it is — damn. There's a decent chance we've got Tashuri mercs infiltrating Earthside. There's a Lantern firewall around Tashur, and if they're violating it, that is not good news for my sector, and even worse news for Earth. Okay, I'm gonna try something here."

He pulled up another program, and entered some new data. Damian was at his elbow, watching closely. "Now that we know what we're dealing with, I bet I can use the ring to locate more fragments, and maybe even. . ."

"Here," Bruce said, reaching around him to pull up a map of Gotham. It overlaid the star map, suns and planets spangling Gotham's tangled streets.

"Okay, here we go," Hal murmured. "If I enter this. . . and the ring scans like this. . . then. . . damn." The Gotham map lit up like a Christmas tree in the southeastern corner of the Narrows, a thicket of blinking green dots. Bruce's finger brushed the map thoughtfully.

"That's not good," Hal said with a frown. "That's dense population?"

"The densest in Gotham."

"Shit. We need to clear that area. That's a fucking arsenal they've got stowed there. Let me get in there and sweep with the ring, and we can maybe avoid any injury to civilians."

"Red Hood's headed there right now. Send me the co-ordinates, he and I can take care of it."

Hal turned to him. "Bruce. That's insane. These are Tashuris, maybe more than one. You cannot 'take care of it' with a grappling wire and some dimestore flashbangs, are you serious?"

"That wasn't what I intended, but it's nice to know that's what you think we do. Yes," he said, into his communicator. He was conscious of Damian's eyes on him. "All right. On my way."

"Was that Jason? Bruce, you've got to get him out of there."

Bruce snorted. "You might have noticed, Red Hood doesn't take orders from me."

"Fine, then I'm coming with you as air support."

"You are not."

"Yeah? Well you might have noticed this, I don't take orders from you either."

"Lantern." And how quickly, he noticed, Bruce and Hal had fallen away from them. They were back in uniform now, wearing every sharp edge that had ever scraped against each other in a League meeting. "You are injured. You should not be out in the field, and you know it. It's one thing if you want to risk yourself, but you won't risk those I'm responsible for, and that includes all of Gotham."

"That's ridiculous." Jordan's brows rushed together. "I don't need to be able to walk to fly, you idiot. You need me backing you up tonight — hell, you need me taking the whole damn mission, but you're too stubborn for that. Is this because — look," he said, and Bruce could see him trying to arrange his words, trying to make himself sound reasonable. "Is this because of earlier? I know I — I said some things I should not have, okay, and I'm sorry, and I'm sure — I'm sure, given the chance to reflect on things, along with like a seven-week crash course in manners cross-indexed with normal human emotion, there are things that you — that you're sorry about too, right?"

"Not particularly," Bruce said.

"Okay, let's cut the shit then. You have zero idea what you're facing out there. You are overmatched, and outgunned, and just fucking overpowered, all right, can you get that through your head? So you wanna step out of the way and let an actual professional handle this?"

" _Handle_ this," Bruce said, and he could feel the slow tightening of his jaw. " _Handle_ it. Why don't you handle the fact that this is _my_ city. Handle the fact that it doesn't matter what's on your hand — it's what's in your head and in the rest of your body that counts. Handle the fact that you're still in pain, you're still on meds, and your judgment is clearly impaired. You are disabled, and you have no business being in the field, and if you were yourself you would see that."

"Bruce, that's —"

" _No!_ " And he was done with this conversation now, done with this day, done with this infuriating man. "I said, no! Goddammit, you may not like the fact that I'm in charge here, but this is my cave, and my house, and my city, and for once in your life you will _listen_!" 

"Fuck that, I don't—"

"Fuck you!" Bruce roared, and some small sane part of him regretted that Damian was standing there, seeing him so spectacularly and profanely lose it. "You are a guest in my house, and you are under my roof, and you may not like it, but as long as both those things are true you will live by my rules and take my orders, is that clear?"

He could hear the reverb of his voice in the far reaches of the cave. Lantern was nothing but absolutely still, and white under his tan. "Now get back upstairs," Bruce said, struggling to calm his voice. "Stay out of my way, and the way of everyone else in this city trying to do their damn job tonight. Do I make myself understood?" 

Lantern said nothing. Bruce could see him breathing heavily, could see the white of his knuckles on his crutch. His eyes were burning into Bruce. It was for the man's own good, couldn't he see that? Bruce stood there a second, suddenly uncertain, and then whipped past him on the way to the car, the cape billowing behind him. "Robin," he snapped, and Damian came to heel, arcing his lithe body into the car ahead of Bruce. Patrol was life to the boy, and he would soon forget the squabbles of his elders. Bruce leaped in and cranked the silent engine to a roar. As he throttled out the cave entrance he could see Lantern still standing there, exactly as he had left him.

* * *

The last thing he would ever have admitted was that there might have been an element of truth to Green Lantern's warning. Jason, of course, had not waited for his signal, but had rushed in as soon as Bruce had given him the coordinates — which was of course foolish on his part, and he wouldn't have made that mistake had he not had his concentration thrown off by Lantern's foolishness.

It had been an all-night battle, and it taken more than the three of them to take down the Tashuris, in the end. He had had to call in Dick for back-up, and Tim, and even then there had been long minutes when he had debated calling Clark. Lantern had not been wrong about the viciousness of the Tashuris, or the wickedness of their tech. If he hadn't thought to reinforce his cape against blasts after Jason's close call the other night, he might not have been able to shield Damian from the worst of it. As it was, he had had to summon the plane, because aerially was the only way to win the battle. Even then — even then, it was a near thing. Nearer than he liked it to be, for everyone's safety. Dick had taken a hit to his side, scorching his back badly. 

"I warned all of you to reinforce your shielding," Bruce snarled, as he and Jason carried Dick to the car — over his protests, of course.

"'M fine, hands off," he mumbled. Alfred would have to take a look at that wound, and at the one on Jason's neck, which was not healing well. So when the car screeched at last into the Cave, only a few hours ahead of the dawn, he had other things on his mind beside Green Lantern's little tantrum. 

"I'm better," Dick had groaned, emerging from the car on his own steam, but holding a blood-soaked cloth to his side. "Ow. Okay. Maybe not. Ow ow fucking ow."

"Med bay," Bruce said, "stat." Jason caught Dick as he swayed, looping the shorter man's arm over his shoulder, and Damian dashed after them both, throwing phantom punches into the air and refighting the whole battle as usual, because he was eleven, and what did he know of how close they had all come tonight to death. And then he noticed Alfred was just standing there. 

"Dick took a hit," Bruce said. "It could be worse, but it might have shrapnel, and I'm concerned about that super-heating metal. And Jason's neck re-opened, of course. I haven't gone over Damian, but he has some abrasions. Tim is finishing clean-up, but he'll be here soon. I want him checked out as well. And we'll—" He needed to check in with the League, issue some warning about these Tashuris. Clark would need to follow up.

Alfred still had not moved. "What's wrong?" Bruce said.

"May I speak to you privately, sir," Alfred said.

"Of course." He lowered his voice. "What's happened?"

"I need to know what passed between you and Captain Jordan tonight." Alfred's face was unreadable, his eyes hooded.

"Ah." Bruce's mouth twisted down. "We had. . . words."

"I see." Alfred's gaze was uncomfortable. Then he pulled a folded paper from his breast pocket, and handed it to Bruce. "This, I think, you should read."

Bruce unfolded it, and saw Hal's erratic hand scrawled on it. _Dear Alfred_ , was written at the top. Unbelievable. Like the child he was, Hal had run straight to Alfred to complain about his ill treatment, the ungrateful little — he glanced at Alfred, whose face was still unmoving, and back down at the paper.

_Dear Alfred,_

_Thank you for everything you've done for me the past weeks. I know enough to know I wouldn't be alive without you, and without Bruce. The two of you saved my life. I will owe you both, to the end of my days. I've loved every minute of being here at the Manor. You've got a great thing going here, you really do. Thanks for taking in the riffraff._

_Anyway, I think I'm well enough to be on my own two feet now — okay, my own one-point-five feet, hah hah. I'm better at quick good-byes, so sorry for skipping out like this. I won't get to see Bruce before I head out, so please, for real — tell him thank you for me._

_Your friend,  
HJ_

"He packed and called a cab, and was gone before I knew it," Alfred said quietly. "He left this very kind note on the bed."

Somehow Bruce found the note easier to look at than Alfred's face. He said nothing. "And now," Alfred said, "you tell me what you said to him."

"I. . ." Bruce fell silent. He bit his lip. "I said. . .words I should not have."

"Not good enough," Alfred said, in a yet quieter voice. Over in the med bay, he knew Jason and Damian could hear nothing of what they were saying, but their eyes were on their quiet huddle, he knew that much. "Tell me what you said to him."

"He wanted to go into the field," he said tersely. "I told him it wasn't safe."

"And," Alfred said. 

Bruce's cheekbones prickled. "I told him. . . he was a guest in my house, and he would live by my rules and take my orders as long as that was the case."

Alfred's silence was more devastating than any words could be. He took the note from Bruce's fingers and re-folded it. "To a guest in your home," Alfred said. His voice had never been gentler, his eyes more steady. "To a guest in your home, a man in need of your care. A man suffering in more ways than one."

Alfred's eyes scalded him. "I didn't—" Bruce began.

"Enough," Alfred said. "You are done here." Bruce dropped his eyes, acknowledging the justice of Alfred's reproof. All his own childish protests died on his lips, which felt stiff and slightly numb. 

"You will find him," Alfred said. His voice was barely a whisper, a thread of sound. "You will go out there, at once, and find him, and bring him home. Bring him to his home here, where he belongs. Is that clear?"

"Yes," Bruce managed.

"Yes what?"

"Yes sir," Bruce said.

Alfred stood there another moment, weighing him, then turned on his heel and left. "Jason," Bruce called. "With me."

Bruce ripped off the cowl as he went, unbuckling armor, tossing it aside. This was not a mission for Batman. "Take that damn thing off," he said, wrenching Jason's mask out of his hands and tossing it with the rest.

"Hey, don't take it out on me 'cause you got your ass chewed."

"Shut up," Bruce snarled. 

"Someone's in trou-ble," Jason singsonged, as they climbed into the car, and Bruce wondered just how mad Alfred would be if Jason's neck wound got considerably worse before the night was over.

* * *

There was no answer on Hal's comm, or on his cell, of course. A quick call to the cab company showed the destination had been Hal's apartment, and when they arrived Bruce slipped his key into the lock. "You have a key," Jason said. "Because of course you do."

"I had it made some time ago, so I could bring him his things when he needed them." They stood in the middle of Hal's darkened, and clearly empty, apartment. 

"Ten bucks says he GL'ed his way up to the Watchtower," Jason said. Bruce pressed his comm. 

"Diana," he said. 

"What's wrong?"

It was his own standard greeting when someone got in touch with him unexpectedly, and he had never realized just how annoying it was. "Nothing," he said. "I'm just looking for Lantern. Is he on the Tower?"

"No, I haven't seen him."

"Would you mind checking the zeta records? He might have gone straight to his quarters without talking to anyone."

"That sounds uncharacteristic," Diana said. "Generally Green Lantern is more in the habit of announcing himself."

Bruce gave a short laugh. "That he is. Anything?"

"No, nothing. There's been no zeta tube activity since my monitor duty began. Have you tried his comm?"

"No answer. Thanks Diana, I'll pursue a few leads here."

"If you'd like I could—" He switched her off before she started asking questions. Jason was leaning against a wall, just watching him with a knowing look that did nothing to quell Bruce's homicidal urges. He pulled out his cell.

"Barry," he said. 

"Mmph," Barry said. It was three-thirty in the morning; he had forgotten that part. 

"Barry, sorry to wake you. I'm wondering if you've spoken to Hal recently."

"What's wrong?" Barry was instantly awake. "Is he okay? Did he—"

"Everything's fine. Just trying to get in touch with him. Go back to sleep."

"No but wait — isn't he supposed to be living at the Manor? How come—"

"Get some rest," Bruce said, clicking off. Jason was actually smirking. 

"Going well, I see," he said. 

"Oliver," Bruce said, trying the next call. 

"Hey, what's up?" Oliver sounded surprisingly awake. Very probably he had not been to bed yet. "Heard there were some big goings-on in G-town tonight. How come you didn't invite me to the party? Alien tech, seriously?"

"Oliver, I'm wondering if you talked to Hal today."

"Ah. . . nope, don't think so. Why, what's up?"

"Nothing, just trying to reach him."

"Wait, you lost him?"

"I did not lose him. He is a grown man who comes and goes as he pleases."

"Okay, but has he left the Manor at all in six weeks?"

Bruce pressed his fingers to the bridge of his nose. "Just—obviously you haven't talked to him, so good night, I'll talk to you later."

"No wait, I want to know what the hell—" Bruce clicked off the phone and stared at it. Ace detective, out of leads. He sat in a chair and crossed his legs and thought. The trick was to think like Hal. 

"I'm just putting this out there, but dude obviously does not want to be found. I'm just saying. He's not like, your personal property, B."

Bruce did not answer, but sat in the silence and the dark, thinking. It as still possible he was on the Tower. He could have flown to the Javelin bay door. That door was supposed to be secure, but he knew for a fact people often omitted closing the outer doors, on the theory it made for a faster launch when needed, and they weren't wrong. Hal hadn't wanted to be bothered with people; it was possible he had entered the Tower that way. He might even have taken the Javelin somewhere, headed off-world. 

"So here's a question," Jason said. "It's kinda under the heading of territory we've never actually covered. You're bi, yeah?"

Bruce's thumb rubbed the slick of his phone cover. "Because takes one to know one, is all," Jason continued. "I get that this is not a conversation you are falling over yourself to have with me."

"This is not the time," Bruce said shortly. He caught Jason's shrug in the dark.

"Maybe not. Or maybe it really, really is. Are you sleeping with Hal?"

He ought to get them out of the apartment, or tell Jason to mind his own damn business, or shut him down or up or any number of things. Instead he just sat there in the dark, because he had no idea where to go next. "Of course I'm not," he said, but he was more tired than irritated. 

"Right. Of course you're not. Is that _of course I'm not_ as in, of course I wouldn't possibly consider having sex? Because I happen to know you get served on the regular, both sides of the table."

"Jason," he said, but he didn't know why he was saying it. Certainly not because he had some hope of shutting him up. 

"Or is that _of course I'm not_ as in, I would never have sex with a team member? Because Clark sure seems to be ignoring that rule, if it even is a rule. Or is that _of course I'm not_ as in, I would never sleep with a guy for whom I actually had feelings, because the way I massage myself into heteronormativity is to tell myself that dudes are for boning and chicks are for dating?"

"I'm tired," Bruce said. "Can't you just — I'm tired." And he rested his head briefly against his hand, shutting his eyes. He couldn't even fight his way through the thicket of appalling things he had said to Hal today; they cloaked him like a blanket when he sat down, suffocating him. The things they had both said. _A man suffering in more ways than one_ , Alfred had said. 

"Hey," Jason said, and Bruce tried not to startle that the voice was right at his elbow. And then Jason's hand was on his arm. "Hey, it's gonna be okay, all right? Listen, why don't we do this. You duck into the bedroom there and get a few hours' sleep. I totally get that Alfred will remove what's left of your ass with a very blunt razor if you show up without Hal, so you stay here and let me go do some poking around back in the city, yeah? I'm not so bad at this investigator stuff. In my childhood I was taught by a world-famous detective, I don't know if I mentioned that."

"There are some things," Bruce said, tipping his head against the back of the chair, "that he might have forgotten to teach you."

"Nah, he did all right."

He was caught off-guard by the tenderness in Jason's voice, by this Jason he did not know, who looked at him in a way Jason did not. He had done nothing but disappoint people today. Why would it be today that Jason looked at him that way? But he was too tired to even make it to Hal's empty bedroom. He was too tired for his feet to move. He was too tired for any movement. He could just curl up right here and—

His eyes flew open. "With me," he said, suddenly awake, and he was out the door, flying quickly down the stairs ahead of Jason, all the way to the parking lot. There, in the far corner — Hal's car. Why, why had this not been his first stop, how could he have forgotten — it was thirty-seven degrees of bone-chilling cold, and how, how could he have been so stupid—

He wrenched open the door of Hal's car, and Hal, who had been propped on the door, practically fell out the back seat, blinking blearily at him. "Jesus Christ," he mumbled, "what the. . . what the hell are you doing?"

Bruce knelt by the side of the car. Whatever else was in him had been scoured out of him by this night. "Please," he said. "Please come home. Come home for Alfred's sake, if not for mine, because he deserves your friendship even if I don't. Please just come get warm."

Hal was continuing to blink at him. There was something odd in the way Hal was looking at him. Like he was looking at him, but not at him. Like he was struggling to focus on him, almost. And his forehead — in the sick reflected glow of distant lights, his face looked ashen, wrong. Bruce touched his face, and felt the bottom drop out of his stomach. "Jason," he called. 

"Right here."

"He's burning up with fever. We have to get him out of here. I'll need your help."

"I'm fine," Hal was murmuring. "Really. I just. . . need to get back to sleep."

"On his other side there. Get under him there. Mind the leg."

"Some people can't let other people get a good night's sleep. I'm fine, please just — fuck," Hal gasped, and Bruce felt the convulsive shudder in all his body, felt Hal clutch at him like a drowning man. 

"What's wrong," Bruce whispered, "what's happening, talk to me." Hal's body felt like one of those super-heated pieces of metal; he was almost too hot to hold. 

"Just—my leg—I can't—" He was still breathing hard, and his hot heavy head was lying on Bruce's shoulder, leaning against his neck. "It's just my leg."

"But you haven't been in this much pain since the surgery," Bruce said. "If something has gone wrong with it, we need to know when it—"

"No," Hal said. "Not that leg. The other leg."

And Bruce froze, there in the frigid windswept parking lot, holding Hal up as best he could. "Your other leg," he murmured. It was the thing he had not wanted to admit he was waiting for, the unnameable, unfaceable possibility. His throat clenched tight, and almost he couldn't get the words out. "How long?"

"Off and on. Thought I was. . . imagining it. But today. Last night. I don't. . . . remember. It just—oh Jesus fucking Christ it hurts, I can't, I can't, make it stop—" 

Hal shook, and Bruce shook with him, Bruce's own breathing rattled and rasped with Hal's. He held him so tight he was surely cutting off breath, trying to stop whatever was wracking Hal's body, but Hal's fingers just dug into him tighter, Hal's head just burrowed harder into him. Jason was searching for his eyes over top of Hal, but Bruce couldn't look at him, couldn't do anything but hold onto Hal, his arms wrapped desperately around him. 

"It's going to be all right," he said, which was as much nonsense as when Jason had said it to him. "I'm here," he said, which was the truest thing he knew to say, and he kept saying it, over and over: "I'm here, I'm here, shhh, I'm here, I'm here."

Together they got him to the car and loaded carefully, so carefully, into the back, though Bruce saw him bite his lip to the blood to stifle a cry. "Drive," Bruce barked, tossing the keys at Jason, and he climbed into the back seat with Hal to steady him. Hal's body was too long for this to work well, though the Jag at least had more room than Hal's damn Hyundai. He held Hal's head, his chest, against his own chest, though the heat of it burned through his shirt. At some point Hal passed out again, and Bruce wove his fingers in Hal's and kept muttering the nonsense words all the long dark drive back to Gotham. 

"Hey," Jason murmured from the front seat, and Bruce raised his head from where it rested against Hal's, and then realized Jason wasn't talking to him. "Yeah, we're headed back. You okay?"

He was on his communicator to someone, just talking in a low whisper, trying not to wake Hal up. "Yeah," Jason was saying. "I know. You too babe. Keep me awake, all right?"

The rest of the drive was punctuated by the low occasional thrum of Jason's voice — a slight laugh here and there, as he listened to a story. It bothered Bruce that he couldn't figure out who Jason was talking to. From his angle in the back seat he could see the splash of interstate lights against Jason's face, and he watched the way the handsome mobile face relaxed into a soft smile, or nodded. It struck him how little he knew of Jason's actual life; how little Jason knew of his, possibly. Or maybe that was untrue on both counts.

Toward dawn Hal began to rouse, his eyes fluttering open, and Bruce stroked his head, trying to soothe him back. The fever hadn't broken at all, and Hal's body still shook with it, fought it. But his eyes looked a little more lucid. "Thought you were a dream," Hal whispered. 

"Nightmare," Bruce said, with a quirk of smile.

"Nah, never that." The hot heavy head settled back against him, his hand on Bruce's chest. Bruce squeezed the hand tighter. "I'm sorry," Hal said, so faintly he could almost not hear him. "I'm so sorry, I'm sorry."

"No," Bruce choked, and he didn't know what they were talking about — was Hal sorry for being sick, sorry for leaving, sorry for earlier? None of it was anything he needed to be sorry for, and Bruce held him tighter, brushed his face against Hal's hair, that beautiful impossible hair, and shut his eyes. He could feel Jason watching him from the rearview mirror. 

Hal was back under again when they screeched into the cave. Extracting him was easier than getting him in had been, because Jason had evidently called in the cavalry — Alfred and Dick and Tim and Damian and even Barbara were all there, and Leslie was standing in the back, waiting over in the med bay. Bruce kept his eyes on Hal, making sure he was steadied and not jostled as they shifted him, not moving his hand from where it was locked in Hal's own. 

But in his peripheral vision he saw Jason emerge stiffly from the car, and yawn, and lean against it, and he saw Dick come over and slip an arm around him, and Jason tipped his forehead against Dick's, and they swayed against each other for just a minute. Then they had broken apart, and no one had seen but Bruce. He met Jason's eyes when Jason came over to med bay, where Leslie was busy running lines and monitors on Hal.

Jason arched a defiant brow at him, and Bruce settled his mouth in a grim line and looked back down at Hal. One battle at a time.


	8. Off Switch

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> Everything has an off switch, except Hal's mouth. And dick. 
> 
> (Definitely explicit content in this one, kiddos.)

He woke to warmth, but more softness underneath him than he remembered in med bay. This time he catalogued his surroundings before he opened his eyes, and let himself drift to the surface slowly. There was a noise — some strange crackling sound, like someone crumpling paper. He opened his eyes to his own bedroom at the Manor, and the light in the room was as warm and soft on his eyes as it had felt on his skin. 

There was a broad darkness bending over something, at the other end of the room. And then it resolved into Bruce's back, wearing a black turtleneck, and poking at the fire. That had been the noise — the logs crumbling, and sparking to ash. Ash like his bone. He licked his lips and shifted a little, and Bruce was back at his side. 

"Biopsy?" Hal whispered, and Bruce nodded. He drank the water Bruce tipped to his mouth, but though his mouth was cottony, he didn't feel thirsty. That was probably the IV in him. He fell back against the pillow. His eyelids were heavy and droopy. Bruce was sitting beside the bed now, and he had re-opened whatever book he was reading. The wide windows were dark. So he had slept — or been sedated — almost twenty-four hours then. The scratch on his jaw was enough to tell him that.

"This is a nice room," he said, surprised at how faint his voice sounded. 

"It is. One of my favorites, in fact. Good to see you back in it."

"Sorry about the bathroom."

"It was time for a renovation."

"I'll pay you back."

Bruce shut his book. "Pay me back by getting some rest."

Hal noticed that he didn't say, _pay me back by getting better_. Was that already off the table then? Bruce got up and went back to poke the fire again. The room felt deliciously warm, but not so warm that the blankets weren't welcome. The best kind of warm. There was a knock at the door, and the rattle of a tray as Alfred came in.

"Hey," Hal said weakly. "That's. . . a lot of food."

"You've been under for some time, sir. It's time we get your strength back up. Think of this as turning over a new culinary leaf." 

Alfred lifted the silver dome on a dinner whose redolent fumes caught Hal off guard, and the nausea quickly became something else. Hal scrambled for something to be sick in. Bruce had a basin nearby, and was holding his head for him. It was nothing but bile and spit, but it took a while for the spasms to stop.

"Sorry," he croaked.

"Nonsense," Alfred said. The tray vanished to the bottom rack of the wheeled cart, quickly smothered with its silver dome and a thick towel. "Some lemon tea, I think, with ginger."

"Sounds good," Hal lied. There was a cool rag on his forehead and at the edges of his mouth, wiping him gently. Bruce's hands were deft, and beat back the shame of it. 

"Get some rest, Master Harold. I will return with a pot of tea in a bit. Oh, and Master Damian would like a chance to say hello, when you feel up to it. I saw him with a deck of cards in his pocket, so you have been warned. In fact you have a line of visitors in the hallway, but I will tell them to return in the morning if you wish."

"He just wants his twenty back," Hal said, as Alfred retreated. 

"You've been teaching him to gamble?" Bruce said.

"Come on, it's not like he doesn't have it to lose. I was gonna give it back, eventually. So. _Master Harold_ , huh."

"Don't let it go to your head."

Hal tried a laugh, but that just made the nausea come back. "Okay," he said. "I think I'm ready." 

"It can wait," Bruce said, "if you'd rather."

"No, let's do this thing. Is it a good news and bad news kind of thing, or just a bad news and bad news kind of thing?"

"The former."

"Okay, cool. Bad news first."

Bruce nodded, like that was a rational decision. "The biopsy revealed that both the femur and tibia in your left leg are showing signs of the same sort of degradation your right femur did. The fever was probably a response to the metastasis, though we can't be sure, and you're on a course of antibiotics as well."

"And the good news is, you know how to cure it?"

"Almost."

"Okay, I'll bite, what's almost as good as a cure?" 

"Understanding the disease," Bruce said, and he reached for a stack of papers Hal hadn't noticed on the bedside table. "When you feel like it, you can take a look at these scans. For now, I can tell you what they show. Leslie's hunch was right, insofar as it went. However, we were thrown off course by looking for something organic, and what's attacking your system is definitely non-organic."

"Non-organic," Hal repeated. He would stand a better chance of following this if he were more awake. He had also just become aware there was a tube in his dick. "There's a tube in my dick," he said. 

"Yes, you've been out for some time, of course you were catheterized. There's no need for it anymore. I can take it out if you'd like. Or I could call Alfred if you'd prefer?"

"No, yank away. Go back to the non-organic thing?"

"Well," Bruce said, flipping back the blankets. "It wasn't easy to trace, but Clark was able to lend a hand, once we got a large enough sample. Breathe out."

Hal complied, and winced at the uncomfortable feeling of his internal organs sliding out him. He squirmed at the sharp sting of it on his slit, and Bruce rubbed right where it hurt most, easing the sting. It was only when Bruce had tossed the tubing and sat back down that Hal realized he had just casually thumbed Hal's cock for him, no big. _Oh hey_ , Hal's cock said. _Why don't you do that again._ That had to be some kind of record, even for him. 

"You can see what the sample revealed in that second set of scans there," Bruce continued. "Strangely enough, it's got the same basic structure as a virus, but it's non-organic. Nanoviruses, is the best way I can describe it. My theory is, these nanoviruses are loaded as part of the weaponry, and when you were attacked on Devenar Five, the apparent wound was treated, while these remained behind, undetectable even to Oan scans, burrowing their way inside you. They're designed to eat an enemy from the inside, causing a slow and excruciating death. Brilliantly designed, really."

"Yeah, that's. . . awesome. A plus to them. So how do we get these little fuckers out of me?" 

"No idea, yet. I'll figure it out." Incredibly, he had gone back to his book. 

"Seriously? That's our plan to save my life — you'll figure it out? I mean, don't let me interrupt your reading here."

Bruce's mouth quirked. "Relax. I have scans running in the Cave right now, and every available computer on the Watchtower and in Clark's Fortress is working on it as well. There's an off switch somewhere, and we just have to find out."

"Oh." Hal settled back, and watched the fire. "And if we don't?"

"Everything has an off switch."

 _Except my dick_ , Hal thought. He twitched the blankets a little to cover. Bruce appeared absorbed in his book. "So," Hal said. "What did I miss while I was out? Any Bat-drama I'm behind on?"

"Oh, the usual. Alfred is locked in a death battle with the head gardener, whose hedge-trimming I will admit leaves much to be desired. The caterer from the other night refuses to take down the garden tent, arguing removal was not specified in the contract. It's a problem, because apparently removal of the tent pegs requires a different piece of equipment from installation, and rental of it isn't cost-effective for the caterer. Oh, and my two eldest sons are apparently sleeping together. Other than that, not much to report."

"Wait," Hal said. "Go back to that third thing?"

Bruce tossed his book aside with a scowl. "Yes. For some time now, evidently."

"Huh," Hal said, weighing that. "And that pisses you off?"

"Call me old-fashioned, but I draw the line at incest."

"Incest," Hal repeated. "Kind of a harsh word to use about consenting adults who aren't technically related. Wait. Did you use that word to them? In front of them?"

Bruce was silent, and Hal rolled his eyes. "Well, I can see I woke up just in time here. Bruce, you can't do that. It's not technically incest. This is not really a problem."

"I would point out that you don't have children, but that's a fight we've already had. Trust me, it's a problem."

"Please. I'm dying. _That's_ a problem. It tends to put things in perspective. Who people have sex with, that is not a problem."

"You are not dying," Bruce said sourly. "Stop being melodramatic."

"I'm being _melodramatic_? Really? Unless you figure out the answer, I am sincerely and actually dying here, so I think that ranks a little higher on the 'actual problem' scale than your kids' love life. And you don't really think it's incest, not actually. Come on. Unless you're just using that word because you're icked out by the gay, which would be supremely not cool." 

"I'm not the homophobe here."

"Wait. . . and I am?"

"You said. . ." He trailed off. "The other day. When you mentioned Alex, you were. . . disdainful in the extreme."

"Oh," Hal said, a light bulb going off. " _Oh._ Right, the Viking. You thought _that's_ what I meant? Hell no. I was jealous, okay? I was just jealous. In my fucked-up head, I had started to think things that were. . . fucked up. That's all that was about." He yawned. The torpor in all his limbs was pleasant in the extreme. It made complicated things seem very simple. "But you gotta not bust their asses over this one, B. Seriously."

Bruce had gone very quiet, and he was studying a bit of carpet to his left, as though it held quite a few answers for him. After a few minutes he got up and went to the door.

"Hey," Hal said. "You don't have to—"

"I was just locking it," Bruce said, returning.

"Oh. Okay." _Why were you locking it_ , he wanted to say, but Bruce looked suddenly intent. When he came back to the bed, he didn't sit down, but stood by the side of the bed instead. He pulled Hal's blankets down, like he had before, and then he looked up at Hal. Hal's semi-erection was perfectly obvious, since he wasn't wearing any bottoms at all. Nothing but a soft T shirt. Bruce waited until he had Hal's eyes. And then he lowered his head, and lifted Hal's cock delicately in his fingers, and began to suckle Hal's hardening cock. 

Hal gasped. He put his hand on Bruce's head, his soft black hair. His cock was thickening so fast. This was a hallucination, a medication-induced hallucination. Bruce's amazing tongue was not pushing at his slit, Bruce's thick fingers were not massaging his balls. His eyes stung at the pleasure of it, and also at the lewdness — Bruce was just standing there, fully clothed, his mouth bent to Hal's cock like it was all he wanted to be doing, as quietly intent on this as he had been on his book. 

"Bruce, what are you—okay, that feels so—Jesus Christ, I can't—oh my God, what the fuck are you _doing_ —okay, you're having a psychotic episode, you don't mean to be—fuck—don't stop—please—oh Jesus fuckity fucking fuck—"

Bruce lifted his mouth. "Not your off switch, I see."

Hal's head was literally spinning. "What—what are you—"

"Never mind, it's got to be here someplace." He lowered his head back down and Hal's vocalization became just a low constant groan of pleasure. 

When he came, it was a slow orgasm that felt like it was being tugged from every vein in his body, a slow unfolding that went on for days without reaching a harsh peak, but which shuddered every inch of him. "I'm—coming," he managed a few seconds before. "You—" _should move_ , he had intended to say, but Bruce just deep throated him. "Coming, coming," he whimpered, and it felt so good, it went on and on and just flowed into Bruce's mouth, and Bruce drank him down. He could hear Bruce's throat working as he swallowed. 

He sank back into the pillows like they were clouds, and his eyes slid shut. Carefully Bruce was replacing the blankets. "Get some sleep," he said. Hal grabbed at his wrist. 

"Nuh uh," he whispered. "Don't you dare do that. Don't treat me like a patient."

Bruce appeared to consider. Or maybe he was just listening for Alfred. And then he went to the other side of the bed and toed off his shoes and climbed on it. "Get under the covers," Hal said, and Bruce obeyed. "Now get that cock out for me."

Bruce fumbled at his zip. Hal reached his hand down and closed it around the hot silky length of Bruce's beautiful cock. "Wish I felt well enough to have this in my mouth," he said, thumbing its amazing girth.

"I didn't mean to do this," Bruce choked out. He was pushing into Hal's hand, almost like he was trying not to.

"You gonna fuck my hand?" Hal whispered. "That feel good to you?" 

He roughened his grip a little, gave him some friction. God only knew where there was lube in this house. "Bet you're a hell of a fuck. You ever think about fucking me? That what you wanna do with that cock?" 

Hal's hand worked him fast under the blanket, surmising how Bruce would like it. Bruce arched up, panting now. Bruce groaned, turning his face into the pillow to stifle it, and Hal's hand was dripping spunk. There were several convulsions, and Bruce groaned again on the last one, as Hal ran his hand up the shaft, squeezing out the last bit. It ran heavy and thick down the outside of his hand, and he brought it to his mouth and licked it, sucked his hand clean. Bruce's pupils were so blown there was almost no blue in them. Hal was seized with sudden tenderness, like Bruce was the one lying broken in this bed. 

"I didn't mean to do this," Bruce said again. He was just watching Hal like he would never look away. 

"Can we kiss?" Hal whispered. "I'm not trying to be weird, I just noticed how we hadn't yet. If that's not what you do, that's cool."

Bruce propped on his elbow over Hal, and brushed at his face with his thumb. Bruce's lips were a bit chapped, his kiss almost hesitant. They kissed quietly, with the same sort of intentness Bruce had shown when blowing him. Bruce's turtleneck sleeves were pushed up, and he was wearing a watch, and Hal thought to the end of his days he would remember the way Bruce's bare arm had looked, as it lay across his body, and how beautiful it was, the only expanse of bare skin on Bruce's body. He kissed Bruce hungrily, and Bruce got hungrier right back. And then Bruce pulled off.

"Alfred will be back in a minute with tea," he whispered. "And I need to be out of this bed."

"You think he'd be mad?"

"I think I'm on probation, and I'm not looking for a second offense, Master Harold." He bent for one last kiss, rougher than the ones before, and Hal arched up to him, linking his hands behind Bruce's neck, holding him close. He didn't want to let Bruce go. Bruce bit at his lips. Bruce was stuffing his cock back in his pants with his other hand while he was kissing Hal. Bruce slid quickly off and put his shoes back on, and made it to the door to unlock it just as Hal heard Alfred rattling down the hall with the tea cart.

"Right on cue," Bruce said smoothly, opening the door for him. Hal wondered if the room smelled like sex, and if Alfred would notice, or if he would pretend not to. Bruce settled back into his chair with his book while Alfred poured the cups, and made conversation about Master Damian and his homework, and the perfidious ways of the head gardener, and where things stood in that nasty business with the caterer. Alfred twitched at the curtains, pulling them closed for the night, and made sure there was enough wood ready for the fire, and left Hal a bell to ring him with if he needed any help. 

When he was gone Hal snatched the book out of Bruce's hands. "Put that ridiculous thing down," he said.

"I was reading."

"It was upside down, you idiot. What time does Alfred go to bed?"

"About ten, why?"

"Because I was thinking maybe you could come back down here, later on." 

Bruce's eyes went grave. "Hal," he said. "We can't."

"Ah. . . because why, again?"

"Because you are not well, and we can wait. This can wait. I shouldn't have—I made a mistake."

"The best I've felt in months, and you're telling me it was a mistake."

"We won't be doing this again while you're sick."

"What if I'm sick for a really long time?"

"Hal. I won't take advantage of you like that again."

"Oh my God." Hal let his head thunk hard against the pillow. "Take _advantage_ of me. For fuck's sake, this is not the plot of Jane Eyre. Wait a minute. This is totally the plot of Jane Eyre. Oh my fucking God, I'm the fucking governess." He turned his head back to Bruce. "Okay, but what if I actually die? Won't you feel guilty about the no-sex-having then?"

"I'm willing to bet you will have larger problems on your death bed than thinking about sex."

"Have we met?"

Bruce smiled, just a slow wry smile that twisted one corner of his mouth, the one that Hal suddenly realized was only for him, the one he only ever saw aimed at him. His eyes rested on Hal's, flicked to his lips, then back up to his eyes. Had he ever really appreciated what beautiful eyes they were? Maybe this sublimated eroticism thing would not be so bad. "Get some more sleep," Bruce finally said, and picked up his book again — right side up this time.

Hal sighed loudly, and considered arguing some more, but the warmth was starting to spread over his body again. The crackle of the fire, Bruce's quiet presence beside him, just the safety and serenity of it all. . . it made it easy to pretend there weren't millions of tiny angry robots gnawing at his bones. It made it easy to pretend they would figure it all out. Bruce seemed to think they would. 

And when was Bruce ever wrong about anything?


	9. Chapter 9

**Summary for the Chapter:**

> For those who wanted to know what happened while Hal was unconscious.

"I want him to wake upstairs," Bruce said, bending over Hal and examining the biopsy incision. "Back in his bed. How soon can he be moved?"

He caught the motion of Alfred's glance at Leslie. "He needs another hour at last on the monitors," she said. "It would probably be best if he stayed down here, where—"

"Upstairs," Bruce said. "We can move any monitors. Or temporarily disconnect him, for the elevator. I don't want him waking up here, he doesn't like it."

"This is your house," Leslie observed, "but he is my patient. And you will not be temporarily disconnecting him from anything, not for another hour at the very least."

Bruce scowled and picked up the bone sample, stalking to the chem lab. He could at least get started with his analysis while he waited. He began every analytical program he could think of, but none of them told him anything more than they had known after the first biopsy, and none of them showed any traces of an agent anywhere. After a while he looked up, and studied Hal's still form lying on the med bay bed, his respiration even. His hands were folded on his abdomen, and Leslie was taking his pulse. Of course, she had million-dollar tech down here to do that for her, but Leslie was old-fashioned, and believed that touching her patient told her things she couldn't otherwise learn. She was frowning in concentration as she counted his pulse. Bruce looked at the hand she was holding by the wrist. There was something there his brain wanted him to see. 

"His hand," he murmured. 

"Please," Leslie sighed, "do you think you could find something to do other than breathing down my neck while I—"

"Give me his hand."

"What are you—"

He tugged at the ring, and to his surprise it came off easily. "I'm going to need this for a minute," he said, and went back to the chem lab. He scattered the tiny bits of bone fragment in a petri dish and. . . what was he supposed to do, exactly? He needed the ring's power of analysis, but he had no idea how to activate the thing, and likely neither did Hal — the ring just responded to him because it was a part of him. Bruce rubbed his thumb on the cool slick metal. Should he say please? Open sesame? 

Once, long ago, he had taken it from Hal. More than Hal's outraged protest — which had been gratifying — he remembered the look of surprise on the man's face. Clearly he had been surprised Bruce had been able to do it at all. _Hey, you can't do that!_ he had said, but something in his tone made Bruce think he didn't so much mean _you shouldn't do that_ , but _you shouldn't have been able to do that_. 

So maybe he and this ring weren't so far off being able to communicate after all. What was it Green Lanterns ran on? Will. Sheer will. He stared at the ring and poured all his concentration, all the force of his will, into this one thought: _scan this for me_. It felt almost like there was a wall he was pushing against, but he just pushed harder. And then he felt a small give, almost in the center of his body, and his lab table was flooded in green light. There was a beam of light searching the bone fragments, swirling around them in a circular motion, and then a panel of green light thrown up in front of him. The symbols were strange, alien, unreadable. But then something leaped into life that he could recognize — an image. 

A molecular structure, that quickly zoomed out to the cellular level, and then. . . it was moving. A virus. Like a virus, but somehow not. The scan zoomed out more, and he saw a small hexagonal thing, and a little robotic tail, and he understood. He was looking at the thing that was eating Hal. 

_Send all this information to the Cave's mainframe_ , he thought at the ring with all his will, and a beam of green light shot over to the monitor station. Every monitor lit up at once, and data began scrolling across every screen faster than his eye could follow, all in brilliant green.

 _Thank you_ , he thought.

And then there was something inside his head, and a voice that was him but not him, a voice painful in its volume, its intensity, its crystalline sharpness — it shuddered Bruce's nerves like the scrape of metal on metal, and just got louder. "Ahh," he gasped, holding his hand to the side of his head, which felt like it might explode. 

_Return me to him at once_ , it said. 

He slipped the ring back on Hal's unresisting hand, and tried to ignore the slight chill of the fingers. At the monitor station, he called up all the data to look at it, but it was unreadable, indecipherable. The answers were all there, but just beyond his reach. When Hal woke, the ring might be able to communicate with him more effectively. Or he could just try—

"Clark," he said into his communicator. "Are you anywhere near the Fortress?"

"No, but I can be in a few minutes. How's Hal doing?"

"I think we may be about to have some answers. I'm going to send some information to the Fortress's mainframe, and I'm hoping your files there can decrypt whatever language this is in. Krypton had contact with Oa, there ought to be something in your files that can read a ring scan, yes?"

"Well. . . possibly? Give me a minute, I'll get there and see what I can do. I'll make it work."

"Thank you," Bruce said, and clicked off. He stared at the screen and the data stream continuing to scroll past. Somewhere in there was his answer. It was just a question of finding it. And here he was on familiar ground, where before he had been shadowboxing — against a disease that evaded diagnosis, against Hal's pain that made him clench his fists in frustration. Finding things was what he did. He would find the calm, quiet space in his brain, the space that found answers, and out of this morass of data he would tease the answer that would save Hal.

He would find it, because finding things was what he did.

* * *

When they moved him upstairs, Bruce stayed with him. He made sure the fire was banked, and the blankets piled high — anything to beat back that terrible chill gnawing Hal's bones. He thought of the night Hal had spent in that car, and the clench was not in his fists but in his stomach. His fault. It was his fault Hal had been in that car, and the cold —

Was it possible cold accelerated the nanovirus activity? Clark had sent him as much information as he could translate of the scans, and he had print-outs of some of it to work through, but the information was organized oddly, seemingly randomly, and much of it was contradictory. He would have to study more closely to be sure, and he was so exhausted that the lines of the page and the molecular structures danced in front of his eyes. But his brain latched onto the idea of cold, and he piled more logs on the fire, and another blanket on Hal, willing the warmth to beat back the things eating Hal from the inside out. 

He must have slept, sitting there beside Hal's bed, because he startled at a hand on his shoulder. It was Alfred, wrapping him in a blanket. He curled into it and tried to mumble his thanks. Alfred — there was some reason Alfred was mad at him. 

"Sorry," he whispered. He had left his bow out in the rain, and the wood was going to warp. It was the nice set he had got for Christmas. He ran outside to get the bow, but the rain turned into tiny nasty swarming things, nanobots that ran up his fingers and arms when he tried to grasp hold of the bow. 

"Shhh," Alfred said, and there was a hand stroking his head. "Get some sleep now."

Bruce's eyes fluttered open, and he was awake. He remembered why Alfred was mad. "He's dying," he whispered, and Alfred nodded.

"Yes. You'll figure it out." 

"'S my fault."

"Not everything is, you know."

He realized Alfred had not stopped stroking his head. His eyes drifted shut again. Maybe Alfred wasn't mad any more. Sometimes it was hard to tell. Things you would expect to enrage him he would ignore, and then other times his anger over the strangest things would be implacable. The bow. Had he been angry about that, all those years ago? "Sorry," he whispered again.

"I know," Alfred said softly, and there was a brush of something against the top of his head. He slept again, and longer this time. He woke and stumbled up to put another log on. Alfred must have brought more wood while he slept, and there was a sandwich resting on the table beside the chair too.

He took a bite of the sandwich, and rearranged the bread so it looked like he had eaten more. He was not eager to start another fight with Alfred, and that was the oldest one of all. He tossed the sandwich back on the plate and resettled in his chair. 

"Hey," said a quiet voice at the door. "He still asleep?"

Bruce did not answer, but studied the fire. Dick stepped in and closed the door. He stood awkwardly for a minute, and then cleared his throat. "Leslie said it looked like you might have some answers soon, about. . . how he's doing."

"Mm hm," Bruce said. 

"Well that's good," Dick said. 

Bruce said nothing. Dick stood by the fire, pretending to warm himself a minute, then turned back to study Hal. Bruce caught the frown as he looked at the still figure on the bed. "He's lost quite a bit of weight, hasn't he?"

"He's fine," Bruce said shortly.

"Really," said Dick. He was still looking at Hal in a way that irritated Bruce, and he rose.

"Was there something you wanted?"

Dick sighed, crossed his arms. "Look. I think you and I. . . I think there are a couple of things I need to let you know."

"This is not the time or the place for this conversation."

Dick was nodding thoughtfully. That was a trick he had picked up from Clark, or maybe he had always had it — that trick of appearing to agree with you while quietly contradicting everything you said. "Well actually," he said, "I think it's a great time and place, because we're not going to be having much of a conversation. It's more along the lines of me telling you a few facts. I'm not here to discuss who I choose to be with."

Bruce couldn't restrain the snort. "Which I understand you don't approve of," Dick said. 

"It's not a question of my approval. There are moral absolutes that exist independent of anyone's approval or disapproval. Once I would have thought you understood that." 

"Moral absolutes," Dick repeated. "Moral — what did you just say to me? My love life violates a moral _absolute_? What the hell does that mean?"

"It means love life is a pretty euphemistic term for fucking your brother."

Their voices were still hushed, over by the fireplace, but Dick went as white as though Bruce had shouted at him. He had a hand resting on the mantel, and Bruce saw his fingers dig into the polished wood. "When Jason told me," Dick said slowly, "when he told me that you had figured some things out about the two of us, I asked him to let me be the one to talk to you. I asked him that because I knew — I goddamn knew — that at some point something horrifying was going to come out of your mouth, and I knew that Jason would lose it, and that would be the end for another ten years of the two of you having a chance at any sort of —" He shut his eyes and clutched the mantel harder. "I didn't want that to happen, for both of your sakes."

"I don't require your help communicating with Jason, or anyone else for that matter."

"Yeah, you're doing great," Dick said, with a glance at the bed, and Hal stretched on it. 

"Jason is not well," Bruce said. "His mental stability is not the best, and hasn't been for several years now, as you well know. And yes, I use the phrase moral absolute, because I did not think you would ever take sexual advantage of someone for your own pleasure and convenience."

Dick was squinting at him. "His mental _stability_ ," he said finally. His voice was even quieter now. "Jesus Christ. You do. That is what you think, isn't it? You really believe that you are going to get him back. That one day Jason is going to wake up, and he's going to be seventeen-year-old Jason again, and the entire life he's built for himself since then, all that's just going to be erased. That's really what you think, isn't it?"

Bruce put his hands in his pockets and turned away, fighting the clawing sensation in his throat. He was kneeling in the snow, screaming Jason's name, Jason's blood smearing his hands and chest and face. There had been a five-inch shard of glass embedded in his beautiful eye. 

"Sometimes I think Jason changed less than you did," Dick said, as softly as before. But he didn't know. He had not seen the glass in Jason's eye. He had not held his son, broken in the snow. He had not killed his own son. 

"This is not the time," Bruce said harshly. 

"Oh, but it is the time to call me a rapist. An incestuous rapist, at that." 

"What the two of you are doing is wrong. You know it as well as I do."

"What I know is that—"

Bruce spun around at the sound of shifting from the bed. Hal had tried to turn, and mumbled something, and Bruce was quickly at his side. Hal was still deep under, but there was a frown on his face, and Bruce rested a hand on his shoulder until his breathing re-settled, and he was quiet again. " _Enough_ ," Bruce hissed. "Go."

"Right," Dick said. "Of course." He stalked out, but silently, and his slam of the door was caught by his hand so it became a soft click. 

Bruce sank into the chair beside Hal's bed. He stared fixedly at the blanket, and then let his head rest in his hands. He shut his eyes, but only briefly. He rose to check the level of Hal's morphine drip, tapping the line pointlessly a few times. With any luck, they could keep Hal's pain at bay a little better, now that they knew what they were fighting. What Hal was fighting, rather. 

His phone buzzed again, with yet another text from Clark, floating yet another scientifically and medically improbable idea to save Hal. Bruce snorted, and ignored it.

_You know the problem with you, Bats? It would never occur to you other people might have actual opinions, because it would never occur to you other people actually exist._

Some League meeting, some argument he couldn't now remember. A map spread on the table, seven heads bent over it. _You're being childish_ , he had snapped. _And you're throwing a child's tantrum because you were outvoted._

_You realize people don't actually like your ideas, right? They just get tired of listening to your voice, you elitist prick._

_Lantern_ , Clark had said. 

_Whatever_ , Jordan had said. _Forget it, I give the fuck up._

Bruce sat back down and watched him sleep some more. He did not dare touch him or risk rousing him. Waking would likely mean an end of his respite from pain. "Don't give up on me yet," he murmured, and reached for a book on the nightstand.


	10. Chapter 10

It was pretty much the most awesome time of his life, except for all the imminent death part. And the truth was, even that was kind of hard to grasp — in his world, death came at you in a blaze of hot light, in a thrust through the middle, in the blinding fire and noise of a battle. Never in a quiet bedroom on a sunny day, on stealthy cat feet like this. 

But the pain had mostly receded, because knowing what it was eating at him made medicating a little easier. True, he was in a wheelchair now, in the hopes that removing the stress on his bones would slow things down a little. And he was tired in ways he hadn't been before, so a lot of times he just stayed in his bed. But then Damian would come and spread the cards out on the bed, and they would play poker for hours, or Hal would just watch him sketch on his pad — the kid had a hell of an eye. And somehow Alfred always ended up staying when he brought tea, and he would keep Hal updated on all the small dramas of the household, or better yet tell him stories of his time in the service. Dick and Jason and even Tim drifted in an out, when they would come to the Manor, and occasionally Damian would deal them in to whatever card game he and Hal were running. The afternoon Alfred decided to teach them whist, Hal had laughed so hard his ribs had ached. 

"Who's your _what_?" Damian had said.

"Who's Your Bobby," Alfred had explained. "A variant of whist in which the jack of diamonds is instant trump. If you draw the bobby, you take the trick. Master Damian, for all the love," he said, plucking a kitten off the back of his neck as it clambered up him, claws dug into his jacket. He pulled another one off the cards it had scattered across the bed. Someone had brought Damian a basket of kittens, and they followed him everywhere through the Manor now. Hal had no idea what their names were, but as far as he was concerned they were all called Sticky, Squeaky, and Claws Like Fucking Daggers. One had worked its way under the covers and was practicing experimental acupuncture on his thigh.

"Fucking Christ," he yelped, and Alfred didn't even correct his language. "Damian, if you don't contain your vermin, I'm gonna beat them to death with my cane."

"You wouldn't dare," said the imperious little ninja, collecting another one from underneath a blanket, where it was clearly plotting an ambush.

"Yeah, well they're making it hard to concentrate on Who's Your Booby. Where'd my cards go?"

" _Bobby_ ," Alfred said firmly. "As I was saying, the jack of diamonds is instant trump, and whoever draws it takes the trick. Now if on the other hand—"

"So it's the golden snitch?"

"The what?"

Hal looked at both their blank faces. "Oh my God," he muttered. "Worse and worse. Seriously, no one in this house has read any Harry Potter?" 

"I have," said Bruce from the door. A white fluffball scampered across the floor and began climbing his pants leg. Bruce watched it dispassionately. 

"Yeah, I bet you have, you've got all the marks of a Snape fanboy. Pick up any pointers?"

Bruce scruffed the kitten and placed it gently in the basket, right before it arrived at his groin. Hal was pretty sure even Bruce's composure would not survive a kitten claw to the balls. "Please tell me they've had their shots," Bruce said.

"Veterinary visit is tomorrow," Alfred said, and Bruce wiped his hand in some distaste. The fluffball he had deposited in the basket had spilled back out and landed directly on Titus, who heaved a longsuffering sigh and let the thing chew on his ear. 

"Come back, Tamora!" Damian called, and he lofted off the bed and over Titus, haring off down the hall after the demonic catlet. Alfred echoed Titus's sigh and scooped up the basket and as many of the creatures as he could reach. 

"I shall return with tea, sir," he said. 

"Sounds good. And then we'll find your booby, I promise."

"Excuse me?" Bruce said. "Oh look, an extra." He plucked a well-camouflaged little brindle out of the woodpile by the fireplace. 

"So where'd they all come from, anyway?"

"Hm? Oh, I think Selina brought them. It's the sort of thing she tends to do. Catwoman," he amended. 

"Oh," Hal said. "Right. I forget, you guys are pretty close, huh?"

"We have been, at times."

"Oh. Well that's nice."

Bruce threw another log on the fire — and maybe the brindle kitten too, Hal couldn't swear to it — and turned to look at him. There was a small wry smile on his face, and his eyes met Hal's as though he knew exactly what Hal was thinking. He didn't say anything, but let his eyes rest on Hal's, and Hal's eyes stayed there too. They did a lot of that these days. 

Bruce had been as good as his word, about the whole sex thing. About anything like that, in fact. Part of Hal had thought, _yeah right, we'll see about that_ , and for a while he had thought he might roll over at night to find Bruce had sneaked downstairs to slide into his bed. But apparently Bruce had meant it when he had said there would be no more of that.

Didn't mean they couldn't look, though. And look they did. He found his eyes meeting Bruce's, and then they would both rest there, just quietly, and to his surprise Hal found that a lot of things could get said that way, even things there weren't always words for. 

And Bruce did come to his room, plenty. He came downstairs almost every night, in fact, though it wasn't for the reasons Hal might have liked. It was because he could keep the pain at bay during the day, but for some reason nights were the worst. Nights were still agony. And he could up the meds, but if he did that, he became this torpid catatonic thing, and he didn't want to sleep away any more of his life than he had to. It wasn't like he was unaware there might not be that much more of it. 

So Bruce was there, in the nights. He would roll over and find Bruce already sitting in the chair, and Hal's arm would reach for him, and there would be the firm warm clasp of Bruce's hand in his, and he could wring that hand and Bruce wouldn't cry out, Bruce could take it. Bruce knew when it got too bad for Hal to take, and Bruce understood when it was time for more meds. "Please," Hal said once, and Bruce seemed to understand that too. He got up on the bed with Hal and just held him, held him while he shook, held him so tight it made it possible to feel something other than pain. 

In the dim firelit nights, Hal murmured things to him he had never told anyone — stories about Brinley and Brayden, and his sister Jess, and his worries about them. Some things about Amber, and Buck, and Bard's Cove, Kentucky, and California after that. How he had wanted the sunny golden warm of California to paper over all the Kentucky festering inside him, and how it almost, almost had. On nights he was lucky, he would fall asleep like that, Bruce's arms tight around him from behind, his head on a downy pillow. On nights he was not so lucky, he would make Bruce read to him to beat back the pain.

"Not English," he said one night in desperation, flicking the morphine dial a little higher. "Nothing with words I know." So Bruce had gone to the library down the hall and come back with _The Magic Mountain_ and started reading. 

"Not that," Hal said. "That's German, I know German."

"Okay," Bruce said, and came back with _Madame Bovary_. 

"No good," Hal said.

" _Quixote_?"

"No."

"All right, I can probably find some Tolstoy."

Hal winced. "That—probably not."

"For God's sake, how about you tell me what languages you _don't_ know," Bruce said in exasperation. 

"I was good at language stuff," Hal said apologetically. "I'm shit at the grammar, if that makes you feel better."

"I find it hard to believe Lassiter County High School offered quite this many languages."

"It really makes you mad that I'm not an idiot, doesn't it?"

"Occasionally. Stay there, I know what to read. You'll just have to make do with English, though."

"'S okay. Your voice will probably put me to sleep anyway. Always used to work in League meetings."

He caught Bruce's hesitation at that, and he heard it too — the way he so easily made League meetings part of some faraway _used to_ past. It was getting hard to remember there had been another life. When Bruce came back and re-settled in the chair, the pain meds had finally started to kick in, and the room was going soft at the edges. "Once back under the starry sky," Bruce read, "Harry heaved Dumbledore onto the top of the nearest boulder and then to his feet. Sodden and shivering, Dumbledore's weight still upon him, Harry—"

"Hey wait a minute. You skipped ahead, by like fifteen thousand pages."

"I like this part."

"You would," Hal mumbled. He let Bruce keep reading, the slow mellow of his voice easing him down sideways into sleep. When he woke, Bruce was asleep in the chair too, the book open on his lap. Hal just watched him for a while. He had never had this long to just study Bruce's face, to do nothing but look at him. It wasn't news that the man was hot, but it was a little surprising that he was beautiful. Those weren't necessarily — or even often — the same thing, Hal had found. But he was. On morphine-fueled impulse he reached out and touched, just brushed his finger on the side of Bruce's face. His finger felt the rasp of stubble. Bruce's lashes fluttered awake, and he watched awareness come quickly back to those blue-gray eyes. He didn't move, though, and Hal didn't stop stroking — just a finger against the side of his face. Bruce's eyes watched him, and he watched Bruce. 

"You stopped reading," he whispered. 

"Tired," Bruce said, and Hal felt a stab of guilt that he had woken him. Now that Bruce's eyes were open, he could see it: the red rims of his eyes, the lines scoring his face. Sick people were selfish assholes. Bruce was working night and day down in that lab, trying to find some sort of answer. He'd probably been looking like this for days — maybe even all week. Hal hadn't noticed. 

"Come lie down," Hal said. "I promise to keep my hands to myself."

Amazingly, Bruce complied, and that was a measure of how tired he was right there, that he knew he couldn't make it upstairs. Hal hadn't even thought, hadn't even realized. For him, time had become this fluid unstable thing, and he would wake and sleep at irregular hours, so he had stopped thinking in terms of day or night. He hadn't even stopped to think until now that Bruce was spending all day in the lab, and his nights here with Hal, and dozing in a chair when he had to. 

"Come here," Hal said, and Bruce more or less fell onto the bed. Hal pulled a blanket over him, and even brushed off the kitten hair. Bruce was back asleep before the blanket was even around his shoulders. Hal tried to turn on his side to watch him, but pressure on the hips felt like hell, so he just lay beside him and watched him sleep. After a while he dared a hand on his back. 

"I lied a little about the not touching thing," he whispered, stroking his back lightly. Bruce was unresponsive. He wondered if Bruce always slept on his stomach, stretched out like he was now. 

"You know what I wish," Hal said. He kept his voice low, but it was clear Bruce wasn't going to rouse anyway. He wondered if this was going to get him in trouble with Alfred. "I wish it was five years ago. I wish it was after a League meeting, or some stupid shit like that, and I wish I had pulled you into a storage closet and just jumped you, just fucked your ever-living brains out. I mean seriously."

He brushed a little bit of hair off Bruce's forehead. His hair was a bit long, too, which it never was. He wasn't taking care of himself. He probably got 700-dollar haircuts, and it looked like he had missed at least the last two appointments. He was at least two days past a shave. "For real though," he mused, "six months ago, if someone had told me I would be lying here doing this, I would have pissed myself laughing. And you wouldn't have been down to fuck anyway. You were probably boning Catwoman. Probably still are, huh." 

He stopped fiddling with Bruce and let his hand just rest beside him. "We would have been good, though," he whispered. "I can see it. And not just the fucking, though that would have been a-fucking-mazing. Goddamn phenomenal."

Bruce's breathing had leveled into a slow deep rise and fall of his chest. Hal nudged his fingers against Bruce's, just a loose grasp of his hand while he slept. But Bruce's hand tightened on his — firm and warm and strong, like his grasp always was. His eyes were still closed though. Awake or asleep? Hal didn't care. He tucked their joined hands up close to him, and curled in for sleep. 

"You've still got more of the blanket than I do," Hal murmured.

"For God's sake," the low voice replied, rumbling the mattress. But the hand didn't let go.


	11. Chapter 11

“Hey, so I need to ask you something,” Hal said one morning. It was a beautiful late spring day, and his wheelchair was parked by the conservatory doors, looking out into the garden. There was a trellis, covered by a vine of some sort, and Damian’s kittens – quite a bit bigger now, but no less manic and unruly – were climbing all over it. 

“Hm,” Bruce said. 

“It’s – about something you probably don’t want to talk about,” Hal said. He tried to keep his voice light. In his head, he had re-worked this part a couple of times. He kept his eyes firmly on the garden. Alfred had just gone out another door, with an oversized pair of pruning shears in his hand, and a ridiculous straw hat. He was squinting against the weak sun.

“Well, that doesn’t really narrow it down,” Bruce said. 

“No kidding. It’s just – the thing is, when it happens, I don’t. . . I don’t want it to be here, is all. I don’t want it to happen here.”

The room behind him was deathly still. There had been yet another trial this morning, of the latest serum Bruce had concocted. He came up with them every three or four days now – variations of an original, or wholly new ones, Hal didn’t even know anymore. He just submitted to the injections, and tried not to watch Bruce’s gimlet-eyed scrutiny of the monitors, his unblinking stare at the spectrographs, as he waited to see the result Hal knew wouldn’t change. Nothing ever did any good. The nanites steadily eating Hal’s body never stopped, but he had seriously underestimated Bruce’s sheer indomitable inability to give up, on anything, ever.

“I’m not such a fan of hospitals,” Hal said, looking down at his hands now. “And your house is. . .it’s—being here has been pretty awesome, I am not gonna lie.” His throat clenched shut, for just a few seconds. “But look,” he resumed. “I don’t want it to be the house somebody died in. That would be a pretty shitty way to repay you guys. Alfred has enough to worry about. And Damian has a lot of years to spend in this house, I don’t want that to be something he remembers. Or. . . you.”

There was still silence behind him. Bruce was so quiet that it was entirely possible he had left the room several minutes ago, and Hal had been having an earnest conversation with the draperies. He maneuvered his wheelchair so he was facing Bruce, and Bruce was just standing there looking at him, his face quietly thoughtful.   
“It doesn’t do any good not to talk about it,” Hal said. “There is such a thing as reality. And we don’t have to talk about it a lot. But just. . . you know. When we get there. I’m counting on you to know when it’s time to, you know, move this show someplace else. Promise me you’ll let me know when.”

Bruce put his hands in his pockets, and still stood there looking at him, frowning. “Huh,” Hal said. “Okay, fun fact, the Bat-glare really only works if someone is roughly on a level with you. Like, something about the angle ratio is all wrong this way. Because sitting down like this, you really just look like maybe you’re having some bad gas or something. The scowl is not really working.”

“I’m not scowling. I’m thinking.”

“This isn’t a—you don’t have to _think_ about anything, all right? Just say _okay Hal, whatever you say_ , and let’s move on.”

“That doesn’t really sound like something I’d say.”

“You’re telling me.”

“And I do have to think about something, because I’m about to tell you no, and I am considering how to do that.”

“You—you’re _what_? You’re telling me _no_? Asshole, I am dying and in a wheelchair, and I would just like to exercise some perfectly reasonable autonomy about where I spend my last days, so do you think you could unbend your rectum a minuscule fraction and shit out a turd of compassion here?”

“I am in fact telling you no, because I am not moved by appeals to shallow sentimentalism.” 

“Did you seriously just call me _shallow_ for—”

“And also because you are not dying, and I refuse to behave as though you are.”

Hal became very interested in looking at his hands again. “Bruce,” he said. The room was back to quiet. “Jesus Christ,” he sighed. “There is some part of you that thinks I want to be doing this. That thinks I am somehow giving up because I, what, just don’t have the backbone you do? Well, maybe that’s because my backbone is literally crumbling into dust while we speak, but hey, I don’t want to go all shallow on you.”

“That was not what I—”

“You listen to me and you listen good,” Hal said. His jaw felt so tight it hurt to grind out words, almost. “There is no part of me that is giving up here. You want to keep coming up with magic super wonder serum, I say two thumbs up, you keep right on injecting me with whatever the hell you think might give me five more fucking _hours_ of life, because hell yes I want to live. Fuck you for looking at me and telling me I’m not dying just because you want it not to be true. You think _you_ want it not to be true? Jesus fucking Christ. Right when—” 

He stopped there, and turned his face away, because he could feel his anger getting the better of him, but also because he wasn’t sure he knew what words to say there anyway. _Right when you and I have started to figure out some things we ought to have figured out about five years ago? Right when I have about nine thousand more reasons to stay alive than I ever thought I would have? Right when life has never looked so fucking good to me, and I have to figure out how to walk out the goddamn door?_

“I am in this fight to the end,” he said, when he had control. He kept his eyes firmly on the floor, and his knuckles on the arm of his chair were white. “But that doesn’t mean I can’t talk about the end, and make some decisions. That doesn’t mean I don’t still get to make decisions. And don’t you ever— _ever_ —fucking call me shallow again, just because I can look at some hard truths you’d rather not. Oh and by the way, that’s getting to be a pretty long list, so maybe you want to think about being less of a homophobic prick to Dick and Jason, you phenomenal hypocrite.”

He grabbed his wheels and propelled himself with all the force of his anger out of the room, not even looking back at Bruce. He counted it a victory for maturity that he did not slam the door of his room, but mainly that was because this was a house where someone was always around, and he didn’t feel like advertising. The last thing he needed was Alfred’s quietly solicitous gaze over top of the tea tray, and he wouldn’t put it past the old man to have heard every bit of that, even out in the garden. The longer he stayed around Wayne Manor, the more convinced he became that there was indeed a meta lurking in their midst, but it wasn’t the one everybody suspected. 

He took a couple of pain pills and hauled himself into the bed to sleep it off, except he was more tired than he had thought—or took more meds than he had calculated—because when he woke the curtains were drawn against the dark, there was only a dim lamp burning by the fireplace, and Alfred had left a tray. He let his eyes slide shut again, and the next time he opened them the room was full dark, and he knew he wasn’t alone.

He rolled over and saw Bruce sitting in his accustomed chair by the side of the bed. Hal reached out a hand, and Bruce grabbed it. Bruce wasn’t looking at him. His grip on Hal’s hand was iron tight. “Forgive me,” he said, so quietly Hal wondered if he had even heard it at all, but he gripped Bruce’s hand even tighter, and tugged. Bruce climbed up to lie next to him, and Hal wasn’t sure if he was holding Bruce or Bruce was holding him, but they clutched each other like they would never let go.  
It was the first time he let himself cry.

Thinking back, it was funny to realize how long it had been since he had cried. He could remember it, could remember the day he had decided he would never, never let himself cry again. It was the day Buck had locked him in the trunk of the car, and Hal had hollered and yelled and beat his fists bloody against the inside of the old Pontiac. He could hear Buck laughing on the other side. And after that had been the scarier time of not hearing anything at all, knowing that Buck had drifted away to get more beers or maybe go in the house and watch a show on the TV or probably just forgotten all about his girlfriend’s annoying kid, and the terror and the suffocating dark had seized Hal, and he had sobbed until he had no more voice, no more breath. It might have been thirty minutes before Buck let him out, or it might have been three hours, he didn’t know. But when Buck opened the trunk, a couple of Buck’s buddies were there with him too, and they were laughing and drunk and reeking. He heard their laughter behind him as he stumbled into the house. He had been twelve when he had decided he was done with crying. 

That was another story he ended up telling Bruce, without meaning to. Bruce’s arms around him were so tight, his hand on the back of Hal’s head holding him close, whispering things to him Hal couldn’t make out. But mainly he just cried: for himself, of course, and for everything he was going to have to leave behind, but also for poor messed-up Amber, for Jess who couldn’t seem to catch a break, for every wretched son of a bitch who had ever tried to climb out of Bard’s Cove only to get kicked in the teeth and shoved back down again. And that was what death felt like: like Bard’s Cove reaching its long fingers out to get him at last and pull him back down with the trash where he belonged. 

“No,” whispered the voice tight against his ear, “no no no no.”

But mainly the drumbeat in his head, over and over: _I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die, I don’t want to die._ He sobbed until there wasn’t anything left, until his sobs were just silent wracking shudders against the arms that held him. Afterward, they were quiet together, and neither tried to talk. And in the stillness of the room, Hal knew that he was done. There would be no more furious tantrums, no more pounding his fists against the inside of the car, no more frantic refusal to face what was happening. He was ready. 

He fell asleep with that knowledge inside him, and woke to an empty bed and sunlight streaming through the curtains. The dinner tray had been replaced by a breakfast tray. 

He rolled over and stared at the ceiling and breathed it in, this strange new feeling. As though last night had been the last of the old life bleeding out of him, getting him ready for this one. He felt oddly light, renewed. It was a whole new way of being in the world, and one he hadn’t expected. It was almost. . .joyful, in a way. Peaceful.

Except for the dying part. That part still sucked ass.

* * *

He found that he got out of bed less and less, and that he got worse and worse at tracking time. Some days he marked the passage of time by the trays that appeared and disappeared beside his bed, and he resolved to try to be better about the eating when he noticed that Bruce had taken to bringing the trays and placing them firmly on the bed, standing there watching him until he put at least something in his mouth. 

The upside was, he got a lot more visitors now. That was probably Bruce, too – he could imagine how those phone calls had gone. But a lot of times now when he roused, Oliver or Barry or Clark or Dinah would be there, and sometimes a couple of them at once, and they would have some ridiculous stories to tell him about something or other he couldn’t remember why they gave a shit about, but it was pleasant to hear their voices. 

Once, Oliver showed up with a stack of actual porn magazines in a milk crate, which he proudly dropped onto Hal’s bed with a look of triumph. “Oh my God,” Hal said faintly. 

“I know, right? So I’m driving through Traviswood the other night, off the I-25, and there’s this garage sale sign, right? So naturally I stop.”

“Ollie, people don’t have garage sales at night.”

“That must be why they looked at me funny. But hey, they sold me stuff! Check this out. It is some dude’s entire lifework, man, his magnum opus, his cri de coeur. It’s every classic Playboy from 1971 to 1983, here in one glorious collection. I shit you not, this stuff is pure gold. The articles, I mean, obviously.”

Hal picked up the nearest magazine and leafed through it idly. “Does Dinah know you bought this?”

“She does.”

“Is that why it’s here, because she told you to get it out of the house?”

“That. . . well, okay, yeah she did, but also because I knew you were a man who appreciates real art when he sees it. Check out February 1981, man. She is un-fucking-believable,” he said, rummaging through the stack. 

Hal flipped a few more pages. “Ollie,” he said, “it occurs to me there’s a whole conversation we never had about my actual sexual tastes.”

“Hey, I’m not judging, I like ‘em natural too. Hair is awesome. That’s why the 70s were a great time to be alive.”

Ollie insisted on leaving the milk crate, but at least he shoved it discreetly under Hal’s bed. Hal was going to tell Alfred about it so he could dispose of the stuff before Damian got overly curious, but Bruce ended up discovering it first. He actually sat down and leafed through one of them quite intently—trust Bruce to be the person who actually _did_ read the articles. Not that he seemed all that uninterested in the rest of the magazine either; Hal watched him unfurling the centerfold and cocking his head thoughtfully at it. 

“Careful Alfred doesn’t catch you,” Hal murmured from the bed. He had been napping, if that was the word for it when you had lost any sense of day or night, and Bruce had probably thought him still asleep. 

“Actually,” Bruce said, “I was just thinking what an interesting project that would make for Damian, to track the use of early airbrushing techniques and the subsequent development of photoshop. If I can translate his interest in drawing into an interest in digital art, that might be a way to improve his computer skills, which he tends to neglect.”

“By using pornography?”

Bruce tossed the magazine aside. “Capitalizing on natural interest is the way you get eleven-year-olds to do things. And he has a healthy natural interest, no worries there.”

“Because if he didn’t, that would be something to worry about, huh. Like with Dick and Jason.”

“I’m not going to talk about that with you.”

“So don’t talk, just listen. I think I know what your problem is with the two of them. No, shut up, listen to me, all right? I may be semi-conscious like 18 out of 24 hours, but I’m not totally unaware of what goes on around me, and this house is what you might call an education in complex interpersonal relationships, so sit your ass down, I’m gonna drop some knowledge. You don’t want them to be together because it makes you feel like you’re not really their father.”

Bruce was scowling at him, motionless. Hal was fairly sure he had not so much crossed a line as flattened it with an invading army and flamethrowers, but what the hell. “Because if they’re fucking, then they don’t really see each other as brothers, right? And if they’re not brothers, then what does that say about your whole family? Like, is the whole thing just fake, or what? Is everything you’ve tried to build here, whatever semblance of normalcy, just a complete failure?”

He sat back on his pillow, exhausted by the talking. It was more than he had talked for several days. Bruce was still staring at him in silence. “See, I do know how your brain works,” he said after a while. “I also know you’re not totally thrilled by the gay thing either, because that’s something else that makes you feel like a failure—like this particular disease you’ve dealt with your whole life has somehow been passed on to them, and that’s just more of your self-hatred there. So none of your whole disgust at Dick and Jason has jack shit to do with them, and it is one-hundred-and-fifty percent about Bruce. Like most things in this house, which is something else I’ve learned.” 

His eyes wanted to drift shut again. “Anyway. I’m gonna sleep again now. Feel free to stab me in my sleep if you want.” 

One of Damian’s kittens had become more sedate recently—the little brindle that always used to climb in his fireplace logs, as if determined to sacrifice itself. She had taken to curling up on Hal’s bed, and was currently nestled on the pillow next to his head. Outside, her bolder brothers and sisters were probably shredding Alfred’s topiaries, but curling up on down pillows in the sunshine was clearly more her speed. She stretched a skinny paw his direction and resettled to sleep, and Hal watched her for a few minutes—she made him feel strangely peaceful. 

When he woke, the tray beside his bed was not lunch, but a gleaming array of knives, tourniquets, and syringes. “I was kidding about the stabbing thing,” Hal said.

“I had an idea.”

“Oh God.”

“We’ve taken a lot of your blood to run tests, but never in any significant amount at once. I’ve been working on some algorithms downstairs, and I think blood volume may play a role in the nanites’ life cycle.”

“So. . . you want to try taking a lot of my blood at once?”

“A minor cut-down, yes.”

“Um. . . is this something you actually know how to do? Because. . .”

“I am a little more skilled in this department than Master Bruce,” Alfred said from the other side of the bed. “And Dr. Thompkins is on hand as well.”

There were some monitors in the room that hadn’t been there before. They must have been setting up for some time while he slept. They had chased away his cat, the assholes. He wondered where she was. “Okay,” he sighed. “Do whatever.”

Alfred was lifting his arms, examining each one for the best vein. They would want an arm rather than a leg—higher and closer to the heart would give faster flow, he knew that much. Alfred tied the tourniquet, and he heard them readying their equipment. Basically, they were bleeding him. They had resorted to medieval medicine here, which was less than encouraging. Any minute now they were going to be sticking leeches on him. 

Alfred’s cut was deft, quick, and almost completely painless. Probably some kryptonite-edged knife Bruce had stashed down in the Cave. “Have fun,” he murmured, and let himself drift back into sleep even as Alfred positioned his arm for maximum blood loss.

* * *

“I was wondering,” Clark said, “what you could tell me about Devenar Five.”

Hal licked his lips and struggled to wake up. Had they been having a conversation and he had fallen asleep in the middle of it? He couldn’t really remember. That was happening more and more, that when he woke up he was less and less sure of exactly what had come before the sleep. That would be the increased pain meds. But the spinal pain was getting worse, and now he had an IV morphine pump round the clock, and sometimes the temptation to flip that dial was more than he could stand. 

“Um,” he said. “Okay. You’re wondering. . . what, now?”

“About the weapon, the one that got your leg. It just seems strange, that they would have weaponized technology undetectable to Oan scans. So what can you tell me about Devenar Five?” Clark was sitting in Bruce’s chair, looking like a normal person on a Saturday afternoon—jeans and soft T shirt, battered sneakers. But he was bent forward, his eyes intent on Hal, and yeah, maybe they had been talking about something before he fell asleep.

“Well, I mean. . . they’re assholes, in general. Pretty aggressive as a society, but also in an export way. Last few years they’ve been involved in selling weapon tech around the sector, and the Lanterns were trying to bust that up. Devenar’s not always super particular about who they sell to, which means advanced tech was going to, like, goat-herders, which is a recipe for all kinds of clusterfuck. I don’t. . . I’m not sure what you want to know. I don’t know much about them.”

“No no, that’s helpful. That’s good to know. Bruce had an idea that this may be experimental tech the Devenarians were dealing with, and I was wondering about going to talk to some of them.”

“That’s. . . really not a good idea,” Hal said, struggling to sit up. “For real. Clark. What are you talking about, like kidnapping some poor Devenarian and turning Black-Ops Bruce loose on them?”

Clark gave a faint smile. “I was thinking he and I could handle the interrogation together. But I need some information about Devenar Five before I go, beginning with its location. My files at the Fortress don’t have anything on it, so I’m guessing they didn’t have any interaction with Krypton.”

“Not sure how much help I’m going to be,” Hal said.

“I was thinking, maybe I could download some information from your ring, with your permission.”

“Oh,” Hal said. “Sure.” Strange that sometimes he almost forgot he was wearing it, these days. It seemed like it was part of another life. He slipped it off his finger and handed it to Clark, who held it in his palm and studied it.

“You know,” Clark said, still looking at it. “I tried to take it while you were asleep, so I didn’t have to disturb you. Bruce had said it was possible, that he had done it before.”

“Oh did he now,” Hal said. That was irritating to hear.

“Yeah. But it didn’t work,” Clark said with a rueful smile. “The ring doesn’t want much to do with me, evidently. Darn thing wouldn’t budge. I thought you wouldn’t thank me if I yanked your finger off.”

“Oh I don’t know, guess it couldn’t hurt at this point. Pretty soon Bruce is going to get the bright idea that maybe he just needs to saw off a couple of limbs. You’ll talk him down for me, yeah?”

Clark was still examining the ring. “That’s pretty much what I do for a living,” he said. His face was solemn as he looked at the ring, and then he tucked it in his pocket. “So listen,” he said, and his tone was lighter. “I’m going to take this back to the Fortress and see if I can get some information, which may or may not work. But before I go, I was wondering if maybe you’d like to take a little trip with me.”

“What, like to Big Belly Burger?”

“I was thinking, more of an aerial view. For some flying. I thought you might be missing it a little. What do you say?”

He looked out the window, and up at the sky. He was surprised to see it was daylight, though what day he couldn’t have told you. His cat was back, curled on the pillow next to him. Despite the warm sun, there was a small fire crackling away in his fireplace, because evidently Alfred believed in year-round fires. “No,” Hal said. “I think I’m good, actually. Thanks for the offer, though.”

“Sure thing. Just so you know, Barry’s planning on making a similar offer.”

“What? That rat bastard. He always used to tell me no before, when I asked for a ride-along.”

“To be fair, Barry pulls some serious G’s. You would definitely need the ring’s protection.”

Hal scratched the little cat behind the ears, and she leaned into it. “Yeah, well. Not that it matters. Probably not the smartest idea right now, considering that a trip to the john is enough to wear me out. Guess I could just use the ring for that too, but I always thought that was kind of a douchebag maneuver, using the ring for everyday stuff like that.”

“I can see that. Sure doesn’t seem to bother Guy, though. Which maybe makes your case, I don’t know.”

“Guy?”

He had never seen quite as much of an _oh shit_ look on Clark’s face before. “Oh,” he said. “Uh. Just—I don’t—never mind.”

“Wow. Don’t ever have an affair, because your lying skills are somewhere below second-grader with a candy bar stuffed down his pants. Who the hell is Guy?”

Clark flushed. “I’m sorry. It’s just League stuff, and I was not supposed to—”

“Clark. Who the fucking fuck is Guy?”

He frowned and looked grim. “Guy is. . . Guy Gardner. He’s. . . he’s the new Lantern assigned to this sector.”

Hal lay back and absorbed the body blow of that. “No, it makes sense,” he said. “I mean, what were they going to do, leave this sector without anyone to—” He turned his head, and the little cat contemplated him through squinty eyes. He absorbed himself in rubbing the side of her head. And what the hell had that meant, that he wasn’t _supposed to_ say anything to Hal about it? One guess whose brilliant idea that had been. 

“Anyway,” he said after a bit. “It doesn’t matter. Hope he works out for you guys.”

Clark was silent, back to studying his hands. “There is one Green Lantern,” he said quietly. “And he is not replaceable.”

He wondered if the little cat would agree, or if any set of hands scratching her back would do. She would need a name. God only knew what name Damian had ended up giving her. Some bloodthirsty unpronounceable name of a Hun warrior queen, probably. And here she was just a homely little stray, happy to hang out here with the one-percent if it meant down pillows and regular food. _You and me both, cat_ , he thought. 

“I think I’m gonna sleep for a bit,” Hal said. “You’ll let me know if you happen to come up with an answer, yeah?”

“You’ll be the first to know. And I’ll have this back to you in a few hours.”

“Thanks,” he said, and extended his hand to Clark, who shook it gravely. Hal hid his wince. It wasn’t that Clark had gripped him hard or anything; it was just that the disintegration was starting to move into the smaller bones now, and any pressure was unwelcome. Clark looked like he wanted to say something more, but Hal rolled over and closed his eyes, and he heard Clark leave as quietly as possible.

* * *

He woke in the night, and knew two things: one, that Clark had returned, and left his ring resting on the bedside table, where it caught a little of the firelight; and two, that it was time to go. He raised his head and was unsurprised to see Bruce at the mantel, leaning against it. Probably asleep on his feet. One more reason for what he was about to say.

“Hey,” Hal said softly, and Bruce raised his red-rimmed eyes. “Come here a sec.”

Bruce came and sat down in his accustomed chair. Hal reached a hand to him, and Bruce held it, loosely. “So I think it’s time to go,” Hal said.

Bruce looked resigned. He nodded, like he had known it was what Hal was going to say. “I wish you would reconsider,” he said hoarsely.

“Nah, I’m good,” he said. “Besides, a change of scene will be good for me. Can you make it happen? I mean, logistically, I don’t even know—I’m not sure how to make it happen.”

“Gotham General,” Bruce said. “Leslie is Chief Resident there. She has a room prepared, and she will oversee your care, coordinating it with my research here in the Cave, and with Clark’s research at the Fortress. If you’re sure, that is.”

“I’m sure.” 

“Hal. I don’t care for making promises.”

“Okay,” Hal said warily.

“But I promise you this. You are walking out of that hospital. You will not die there. I promise you that.”

Hal looked at where his hand rested in Bruce’s. He didn’t say anything to that, because there was nothing he could say Bruce would hear. The part of him that wanted to clutch at Bruce’s words with desperate hope, he shoved back under. “A favor, though,” he said.

“Name it.”

“Not sure I can do. . . the last part. . . alone.”

It was Bruce’s turn to be quiet. He rested his other hand on top of Hal’s, holding Hal’s hand gently between both of his. Hal hadn’t said anything about it, but apparently Bruce knew about the increased sensitivity in his hand, because he didn’t squeeze harder or anything like that. “You will not be alone,” he said finally. “I promise you that, too.”

“Okay,” Hal said. 

Bruce reached over and picked up the ring, and stood so he could slip it on Hal’s right hand. The ring was not something you got to lay aside: it was a vow you made until death, and you were held by it until your last breath. The Guardians could replace him, but they couldn’t take his ring. That was another promise. You died a Lantern, or you kept fighting. It made him want so much to believe Bruce’s rash promise. 

“Let’s get this show on the road then,” he said.


	12. Chapter 12

Dick slid into his bed and pulled the covers up tighter. Spring in Bludhaven was not substantially warmer than winter in Bludhaven, except for the illusory and occasional promise of sunshine, and the pile of quilts was welcome in his loft, which was never well-heated anyway. Almost as welcome as the even warmer long body stretched in his bed.

“Been waiting for you to get home,” Jason murmured. 

“I see that that is true,” Dick whispered back, because damn but Jason was cranked. He was so hard already. How the hell had he been lying on his stomach?

“Let’s go, baby, I need it,” Jason said, snaking an arm around Dick’s neck, his voice a quiet groan against Dick’s ear. It was funny how quiet they were in bed together. Before, he had always imagined Jason as someone who got loud in bed, with maybe leather slings and chains suspended from the ceiling. And maybe with other people he was, who knew. For obvious reasons, their first couplings had been quiet and furtive. Maybe the second time they had ever fucked had been in the bathroom of Jason’s apartment, and halfway through Roy had come home, and Jason had just quietly locked the bathroom door and ignored Roy’s periodic banging on the door – _Jaybird, you okay in there?_ – while he had quietly fucked Dick up against the door. When Dick had come, Jason had spread a hand over his mouth to keep him quiet. Dick had never come so hard in his life. 

“Oh, you need it, huh,” Dick said, a grin in his voice. “Well maybe I’m feeling a little tired tonight.” 

“Baby,” Jason moaned, which was manipulative as hell, because Jason knew nothing got him hard like hearing that word in Jason’s mouth, in that tone. Dick slid what was left of their clothes off, kicking them to the foot of the bed under the blankets and pressing up against Jason and his cock that was already dripping a little.

“Why the hell I ever gave you a key,” he muttered.

“Because it beats hell out of fucking behind dumpsters, that’s why,” Jason said, and bit his neck for good measure. They grappled for a few minutes, letting their cocks rub, and Jason was gasping at it, writhing a bit underneath him, and he knew he was close. “Come on,” Jason moaned.

Jason was taller than he was, it was true, but there was one thing Jason did not have more of than he did, and that was muscle. For sheer densely packed muscle, Dick had him beat. Add a gymnast’s strength on top of that, and when Dick decided to use those quads to pin Jason, they both knew there was nothing Jason could do about it. So Dick flattened Jason’s wrists against the bed and used the rest of his body to hold him immobile. 

“I think you’re gonna need to hold still,” Dick said, in a voice that had dropped several octaves. 

“ _Fuck yes_ ,” Jason panted. He would never, ever tell Jason he had modeled that voice on Bruce’s Batman register, because that would be the end of Jason’s ability to maintain an erection for the rest of his life forever and ever amen, so some things were better left unsaid.

“Very still,” Dick growled, and while he had Jason pinned he just let his own stiff cock brush against Jason’s, just a slow maddening back and forth. 

“Fuck,” Jason gasped, quieter than quiet. “Oh fuck.”

“Stay quiet,” Dick whispered, and Jason’s breath became a choke of sound. He kept his eyes on Dick, and Dick kept his eyes on him, and when the shudders began in Jason’s arms he could feel it. Jason was panting open-mouthed, undone. Dick kept his pace of rubbing steady, just the slow brush of his cock up and down Jason’s own, never deep enough to be the grind he knew Jason wanted, but enough to keep him on the brink. Or maybe not; maybe Jason had been more cranked than he had thought.

The only part of his body Jason could move was his neck, and he threw his head back into the pillow and shouted his release. “ _God!_ ” he yelled, loud enough to be heard several blocks over. “ _Fuck!_ ” Dick could feel the cum dribble out him, getting Dick’s cock slick along with it. He was jerking like he was being electrocuted. Dick held him fast.

When the last shudders had subsided and Jason was limp against the bed, Dick carefully lifted his weight and wiped them both with the sheet. “Motherfucker,” Jason said weakly, watching him. 

“You mad?”

“Yeah, c’mere, let me show you how mad I am.”

“Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

He let himself fall into Jason’s arms, and Jason used his longer body to torque them, so he had his arms wrapped around Dick and Dick was spooned against him. He got his hands on Dick’s cock and started jerking, because Jason knew just how he liked it—much rougher than Jason did, much faster. “Fuck fuck fuck,” Dick panted, kicking at the mattress while Jason held him tight. 

“Baby you make me feel so good, let me make you feel good,” Jason was whispering in his ear. “Come on, get me all wet with it, I can take it.”

“Jay—God, Jay—”

“Yeah, that’s it, come on—”

“Fuck I’m coming,” he gasped, and Jason said “Mm hmm,” in his ear, and Jason was milking him of all of it, long steady pumps of his hand unstringing Dick’s spine as he emptied his balls into Jason’s hand. 

Jason twisted Dick’s head around so he could kiss him, messy and open-mouthed. Dick’s chest was still heaving. Jason hadn’t been the only one who needed it tonight.

The banging on the front door made him flinch, it was so loud.

“What the _fuck_ ,” Jason said. 

“Oh you have got to be kidding me,” Dick groaned. “If this is about my bike in the hall again I am going to burn down this fucking building.”

“Just ignore it, they’ll go away.”

The banging started up again, and Dick reached for what he could excavate of his clothing. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered. “I’m coming, I’m coming!” he yelled at the front door.

“I’ll say you did,” Jason said with a smirk from the bed, and Dick saw him lick his hand so obscenely it made him want to dive right back onto the bed on top of him, but the goddamn banging on the front door was still not stopping, and in five seconds Dick was going to open it with a flamethrower in his hand, or one of the even more exotic pieces of weaponry he had no doubt was stuffed in Jason’s pants. Wherever those might be. 

“What the. . .” he murmured, looking through the keyhole. He opened the door to Bruce, who didn’t wait for an invitation but pushed right past him. 

“Bruce, what the hell are you—”

“I did call,” he said. “Several times.”

“I was busy.”

“So I gathered. I did wait until you were done.”

“For the love of—” Dick wiped his hand across his face. Thank God he had remembered to pull the bedroom door at least partially shut. “Do you mind telling me what the hell is going on?”

“I need a favor,” Bruce said, and he was shouldering right past Dick, and headed straight for the—Jesus Christ, he was pushing back the bedroom door.

“Bruce, what the hell are you doing!”

“Oh super,” he heard Jason say. “This is the best.”

“Bruce, you can’t just—”

“I need a favor,” he said again, and for the first time Dick stopped to look at him, really look. Evidently Jason, still sitting half-naked in bed, was doing the same thing. He looked like a man who had last slept three days ago, and considering this was Bruce, with Bruce’s tolerance for self-punishment, that probably meant it was more like six days. He hadn’t shaved, either. The red rims of his eyes had red rims. 

“Why don’t you sit down,” Dick said cautiously.

“I don’t need to sit down,” he snapped. “Jason, there’s something I need you to get for me.”

“Yeah, let me just get right on that,” Jason drawled. He kicked back the covers so he was bare-ass naked, and fished out underwear and pants that were possibly his, from under the bed. He stood unconcernedly and began pulling them on. 

“I need about six ounces of heroin,” Bruce said. 

“Jesus Christ,” Dick said quietly, but Bruce wasn’t looking at him.

“I can get it myself, obviously, but it’s going to take me at least twelve hours to do it. I may not have twelve hours. I need it now.”

Jason was buckling his pants, pulling up the zip. “Five ounces or over is possession with intent to distribute,” he said. “Wayne Tech stock dipping a little low, you looking to diversify?”

“I need it for Hal. I may be close to a breakthrough, but there are some chemical components I’m missing. I know you impounded some in a bust two nights ago, and I know you haven’t moved it off-site yet. I could have broken into your safehouse to get it, but knowing the amount of security I’d have to deal with, I thought it would be quicker to come here.”

“What makes you think I haven’t already flushed it?”

“Because I know exactly how much you dispose of, and exactly how much you re-sell to keep funding your little operation. You can spare me six ounces for Hal Jordan’s life. Now stop wasting my time. Let’s go.”

Jason glanced behind him at Dick, just a brush of eyes against his. “You look like a man who’s maybe been doing the opposite of smack, in order to stay awake,” he said. “Would I be correct about that?”

“I will do whatever I have to. Now will you help me or not?”

“Not,” he said, and just like that, before either of them had a second of reaction time, Bruce had seized Jason and pushed him against the exposed brick wall, his face right in Jason’s. 

“You _listen_ to _me_ ,” Bruce was shouting, and Dick grabbed him, wrenched at his shoulder from behind, but that arm blocked him brutally, right in the gut, and Dick had been gentle with him, what the hell. 

“You get your fucking hands off me,” Jason said, pushing back. It took him maybe a move and a half to get Bruce’s arms off him, but Dick noticed he didn’t raise his knee to do it. “What the hell’s the matter with you?”

“There is _nothing_ the matter with me. But there is a lot the matter with Hal Jordan, who is fighting for his life right now. You want his death, is that what you want? Does that mean nothing to you?”

“Enough!” Dick shouted, but Jason raised a hand, warning him off. 

“Okay,” Jason said. “Okay. I’ll get you the smack, for all the good it’ll do.”

“It will,” Bruce said. “There is an answer, and I will find it. Everything has an answer.”

Jason was studying the floor, chewing on his lip. He ran a hand over the mess of his hair. “Okay,” he said again. “I’m gonna help you, but I’m gonna tell you something first. My help comes at a price and this is the price, all right? You have to listen to me for just five minutes.”

“Hal Jordan may not have five minutes, I will not stand around and—”

“You will,” Jason said. “Bruce, listen to me. Hal’s dying. He is going to die. He knows it. Everyone who goes to see him knows it. Hal is dying. And you need to let him die. This is going to happen. You have to let him die.”

For a second Dick wondered if he was going to punch Jason. Jason glanced back at him again, and Dick shook his head. Bruce was just standing there staring at Jason, with the strangest look on his face. And then he sank onto the bed, sitting slowly. 

Jason knelt in front of him, so his eyes were on a level with Bruce. “I know this is not what you want to hear,” he said. “I know everyone around you is telling you to work hard, to work faster, to find some kind of magic cure. But sometimes, there isn’t a solution. You taught me that one. Remember that? There is such a thing as the no-win scenario. And for Hal, this is it. You have got to stop injecting him with drugs and magic potions and smack and whatever the hell else. You have got to let him go. Listen to me. You have got to let him die.”

Bruce just sat there, looking earnestly at Jason—or rather, right through Jason, a thousand yards beyond him. He was somewhere else entirely, frowning intently at a spot on the wall behind Jason. “I’m an idiot,” he said slowly.

“No,” Jason said, and he put a hand on Bruce’s knee. “You’re not an idiot, it’s just that accepting the inevitable can be hard to—”

“Shut up, you sound ridiculous,” Bruce said, brushing the hand off his knee and standing up. 

“Ooo-kay,” Jason said. Bruce was headed out the bedroom door. “Bruce,” he called. “Wait, do you still need—”

“Thank you, you’ve been very helpful,” Bruce said. They heard the slam of the front door, and turned to look at each other. 

“Think one of us should go after him?” Jason said. 

“Leave him alone. When he gets like this. . .”

“Yeah, we’ve met.” Jason fell back on the bed. “Fuck. So much for afterglow.”

“Yeah,” Dick said ruefully. They had this one space in which nothing else had to intrude: not the long slow agony of Hal’s death, not the unsavory business of the Outlaws, not Bludhaven, not Gotham, not any of it, and especially and most of all, not Bruce. And tonight all of that had blown through his bedroom like a gust of hot wind. It was like picking up the pieces of your house after a hurricane. 

“I guess it’s some consolation that he sat in the wet spot,” Jason said.

* * *

“Wait. You want to do _what_ now?” 

Bruce repeated the plan carefully, going over every part slowly. He wasn’t sure how much Hal was tracking and how much he was missing, but the eyes in the exhausted face were alert and canny. They were still Hal’s eyes. When he had finished repeating the whole plan, Hal was silent. Bruce sat by the side of the hospital bed and waited. He would not rush him, despite the drumbeat of urgency he felt in his own chest. This had to be Hal’s decision. 

“What are the odds I would actually survive that?” Hal’s eyes were intent on him.

“I would say fifty/fifty.”

“Fifty/fifty,” Hal repeated. “Those are not great odds.”

“They are not.” The question was not whether the plan would work; he knew it would work, there was no doubt about that. The question was whether Hal’s weakened body would survive what he was about to put it through. They might have waited too late. He might have been too late, delayed by his own stupidity, his own desperation, his own stubbornness. Jason had not been wrong about everything. 

“But if I say no, my odds of being dead are right at about a hundred percent. Would you say that’s correct?”

“I would,” Bruce agreed. 

Hal was looking at him, weighing him. “There is just no part of you that knows how to give up on something, ever, is there?”

“Call it a character flaw.”

“I’ve called it a lot of things.”

“That you have.”

Hal was silent again. It was not a small decision, what Bruce was asking, and he knew it. To an outsider – meaning someone who did not know what it was like to watch your world narrow to days and hours – it might seem like an easy decision. Bruce knew better.

Hal sighed. “Ever heard the old joke about the doctor who said the good news is the operation was a success, but the bad news is the patient died?”

“Yes.”

“Yeah. If it was ever funny, it’s sure as hell not now.” He twitched at his blanket, and Bruce knew that if he were still in control of his body he would be shifting, twisting. That was one of the things about what had happened to Hal Jordan; it made you realize how much constant motion the man had been in before, to see it all suddenly stilled like this. Not suddenly at all, of course; it had taken seven months to beat him into submission, to pummel him into this unnatural stillness. Hal Jordan would not go down without a fight. And still his eyes were his own. Bruce waited for his decision.

“So here’s what I think,” Hal said. “I think if we were flying into a firefight, and the odds of survival were a hundred to one, and you were in the gunner chair beside me, I would take those odds. So I’m betting on you.”

Bruce bowed his head. “I’ll tell Leslie,” he said. “It will take some time to get the OR set up with what we need. If we get everything ready on our end, we can do this first thing in the morning.”

“No word from Clark, I’m guessing.”

Bruce shook his head. That had been the biggest disappointment of the last few days. Clark had finally located Devenar Five and flown there, but no one he could find knew anything about the sort of weapons tech that had loaded a nanovirus onto a laser blast. There had to be someone who knew something, but it was a big and populous planet, and for all Clark’s investigative skills, it was going to take him time. Time was precisely what they didn’t have. He would get in touch with Clark and ask him to come back; he would need help for what they were doing tomorrow morning, and he needed Clark on deck. 

_I could try transporting him to a low-gravity planet,_ Clark had suggested day before yesterday when they had talked. _It might slow the rate of disintegration, take some of the pressure off his bones._

Bruce had shaken his head. _It might delay things and give us more time to find an answer, but I’m not at all sure he would survive the trip. I think we’re well beyond that._

Clark’s grave face had flickered on his screen. _That bad then?_ Clark had only been on Devenar a week, but things had gone rapidly downhill here. The time left to Hal was numbered in days, if Bruce’s estimates were right. Bruce’s estimates were nearly always right. 

“Okay then,” Hal said. “Let’s do this thing.”

Bruce pulled out his phone and started texting. Leslie had been the difficult one to persuade, and he understood why: this plan entailed a great deal of professional risk for her, aside from her doubts about its efficacy. It would take her a while to get things ready and assemble their team. When he had sent his messages, he replaced the phone in his pocket and settled back in his chair. Hal was still watching him. 

“So,” he said. “If this is my last night on earth, we better make a party of it. What do you have planned?”

Wordlessly, Bruce reached for the sack beside his chair. He pulled out two plastic packs of orange jello, which was all the food Hal could manage to stomach now, and his tablet, which he propped on Hal’s table. Hal smiled wanly. Bruce unpeeled the jello packs, and handed one with a plastic spoon to Hal. “Cheers,” he said, knocking his against Hal’s.

“Now this is a man who knows how to party. You got a movie picked out for us?”

“Oh I think you know I do.”

“Is it the one I’m thinking about?”

“I think you know it is.”

Hal’s wan smile became a grin. He managed to shift himself over on the bed, masking the spasm of pain Bruce knew wracked him. “Get in, loser,” Hal said, patting the bed beside him, and Bruce grinned back.

* * *

He had always thought that a sudden death would be the way to go. And truth was, everything in his life – Air Force combat pilot, experimental test pilot, intergalactic space cop – had pretty much been designed to ensure a sudden death of some kind or other. He had never actually met an old Green Lantern, come to think of it. But the thing was, this way to go had a lot to recommend it, too. There was something to be said for the time to say all your good-byes, to watch all your favorite movies over again. Not that he was awake for a lot of this one; he tended to drift in and out, but the parts of the movie he was awake for were the best ones. He roused for the part where Cady got Regina George fat on the high-calorie protein bars, and he started laughing. Bruce side-eyed him. “You loon,” he said.

“No, I just started thinking—that’s exactly the sort of thing you would do.”

Bruce was sucking on the plastic spoon of his jello. “Fair,” he said. 

There were really no good-byes left to say, was another great part of it. Bruce had helped with that too, without even being asked. Just a few days ago, there had been this hesitant knock at the door of his room, and his sister Jess had pushed back the door and just stood there, looking stricken and lost. “Hal,” she had said, her voice breaking. “Why didn’t you say something, why didn’t you—” 

He had held out his hand, and she had all but thrown herself on him. That had hurt like a motherfucker—Bruce had maybe not briefed her on that part—but it was the best kind of hurt. “Jess,” he had murmured into her hair, while she sobbed. 

She had stayed most of the day, and they had talked about anything and everything—about Brinley and Brayden, about Bard’s Cove, about stupid shit that had happened when they were young. Not that they had really been young together; Jess had been thirteen when he was born, and she had been well out of there before things really got bad with Amber, after Hal’s dad had died. But it was because of Jess, he knew, that things hadn’t been worse. Jess had sent what money she could to Amber, and after that to Hal; Jess had showed up every few weeks to take Hal to the movies and to buy him clothes and to make him feel blessedly normal for a few hours. He had been too young to know how hard she had had to work to make that happen. She had a bank teller job in Louisville, and she made next to no money, but she slept in her car when she traveled back home to Bard’s Cove, so she would have the money to spend on Hal. He had never told her how bad it got when she wasn’t around; she had done what she could, and he would owe her for the rest of her life. Those were the things Bruce didn’t understand. Bruce had looked at his bank account and thought that his family were nothing but white trash freeloaders; he didn’t know anything about Jess and what she had done for him.   
Or maybe he did. “Thank you,” Hal said, after she had gone back to her hotel, and they had said their good-byes. He knew that had been all Bruce; a plane ticket would have been beyond her reach, even if she didn’t have the kids to worry about. Bruce had been the one to track her down and let her know, and bring her here. You never knew, just how much the man knew about things that were none of his business. 

Hal drifted off again, and when he woke the movie was over, but Bruce was still lying in the bed beside him. He knew he wasn’t asleep. “Hey,” Hal said. 

“Mm.”

“What kind of cancer did you tell Jess I had?” He knew Bruce had told him, but it was hard to remember things.

“Pancreatic. Very fast-moving.” 

“And if tomorrow—or today, I guess now—doesn’t work, what are you going to tell her?”

There was a long silence at that one. “The truth,” Bruce finally said. “She will know who and what her brother was. Her children will know.”

“Don’t do that. Please don’t. It would just—it would make her feel worse, that I hadn’t told her all these years, that I had kept that back. She wouldn’t understand.”  
“Bruce,” he said, when there was only more silence. “Promise me.”

“I promise.”

In the quiet of the room, Hal’s hand found Bruce’s. He laced their fingers together, gently. Like that first night in the Cave, when he had been in so much pain, and Bruce had helped him. He wanted to say thank you for the last seven months, but he didn’t know how. Bruce never needed words anyway. 

“You should know,” Bruce said. “I have already made the arrangements. Brinley and Brayden, and Jess for that matter, will want for nothing. There are two slots at Gotham Academy, waiting for them, and a desk job at Wayne Industries, if Jess wants it. If she would prefer to lie on the sofa and eat bon-bons all day, she can do that too. But this part is not negotiable. This I won’t promise away. I’ll tell them Uncle Hal had saved up, that it comes from you. But it’s happening either way.”

Hal turned his face to the wall. “Thank you,” he said, through the clench of his throat. 

“Get some sleep now,” Bruce murmured. “I’ll stay.”

“Bruce.”

“Mm.”

“I’m sorry I called you a phenomenal douchebag.”

Bruce shifted slightly in the bed. “Which time?”

“All of them.”

“Well. You weren’t exactly wrong.”

For some reason that made Hal laugh again. He rested his head on Bruce’s shoulder and let his eyes drift shut. As last nights on earth went, this one did not suck ass.


	13. Chapter 13

“Oxygenation at 98,” Leslie said. “BP 110 over 64.”

The operating room was still, except for the beep of the monitors. At the center of it rested Hal, the lines connecting him to the monitors arrayed around him: pulse, respiratory rate, oxygenation, blood pressure. The EKG stood on the opposite side; an IV ran from his right arm. Leslie stood by the IV, and Bruce sat at his head, monitoring the anesthesia. 

“I’m going to run the nerve stim now,” she said, and she hooked it to his wrist. It would tell them the state of Hal’s peripheral reflexes. Clark stood opposite, watching carefully, his eyes flicking from Hal’s wrist to Bruce to Leslie.

They had decided to keep the operating room itself to just the three of them, but that didn’t mean they were alone; this OR had a glassed-in viewing room above it, and he caught the pacing of some of the spectators up there. He knew Barry was up there, and Oliver, and Diana, and he had even caught a glimpse of Jason. But he was keeping his focus confined to this room; he couldn’t afford any distractions. 

The plan was elegantly simple: if the nanites would only stop with Hal’s death, they would give them Hal’s death. It was Jason who had made him see it. Here he had spent all this time trying to prevent Hal’s death, when the solution had been staring him in the face for months. Hal would have to die. Jason was right about that much.

His experimentation had proven that at four minutes thirty-eight seconds without oxygen, there was no further nanovirus activity, even when reintroduced to an oxygenated organic environment. They needed oxygen the same way a human body did, and they were programmed to keep eating tissue for as long as their host was alive. If their host was dead, they stopped. But all of this was information gathered in his lab, from experiment after experiment, and it wasn’t backed up by a live trial. He had seriously contemplated using one of Damian’s cats, but that would probably have destroyed any chance of a functional relationship with his son. And there hadn’t been the time for a test trial anyway.

So to make it safe, they were calling it at four minutes forty-five seconds. That was the point at which they would then flood Hal’s body with electrical stimuli to restart his heart. “We will have fifteen seconds,” Leslie had said, “maybe less, before the cerebral anoxia causes permanent brain damage. That is a very narrow window to be aiming for.”

“It’s enough,” Bruce said. “It will have to be.”

“I’m still not convinced this is the best course of action.”

“Do you have a better idea?”

“All right,” Leslie was saying. “I’m going to push the syringe.” She picked up the vial of magnesium sulfate and drew out the fatal dose. It was an elegantly simple way to cause cardiac asystole, with little residual tissue damage, and Bruce approved of her choice. There were more reliably deadly drugs, certainly, but at the correct dose nothing was going to beat the clean brutality of magnesium sulfate.

Silently he watched her depress the plunger into Hal’s IV. Was that a flutter on the oxygenation monitor, or had he imagined that?

“Oxygenation to eighty,” Leslie was saying. Bruce watched the cardiac monitor. The sinus rhythm was slowly, almost imperceptibly flattening. He caught motion in his peripheral vision from the observation area; a blond head pacing anxiously. Probably Barry. 

“Clark,” Leslie said, “Tilt that resp rate screen my direction about twenty degrees.” They watched as the IV continued to drip, drip, drip its liquid death. 

_First do no harm_. That was the first and greatest oath a physician took. All of Leslie’s training would be arguing against what she was doing right now: deliberately killing her patient. If this did not work, she would be up on charges. Quite possibly she would spend the rest of her life in jail, and all his money and influence would not be able to protect her. 

“We can do this on the Watchtower instead,” he had said.

“No,” she had said emphatically. “If we do this, it happens in my OR, with equipment I know. Home turf advantage. It’s an increased risk to Hal to move him anyway, and I’d rather increase the risk to myself than to my patient.”

Every now and again he was reminded that he had chosen the right doctor for the League. 

Leslie’s eyes were on the cardiac monitor now. “Five milliliters,” she said to Bruce. He increased the anesthesia level, slowly, slowly. Combined with the magnesium sulfate, asystole would be even faster. “Pulse/ox at thirty,” she said. “Twenty-five.”

“I will get him to flat sinus,” she had said last night. “After that, it will be all your show. You’ve done the research. It will be up to you.”

The room was perfectly still. Even motion up in the viewing area had stopped. The halogens overhead reflected off the shiny green tiles and gleaming steel of this room. The antiseptic used to scrub the floors assaulted his nostrils. 

“Pulse/ox to ten. One more mil on the dial.”

He opened the valve, just the barest bit. His hand was steady. All three of them were watching the monitors. He watched the faltering sinus rhythm, as Hal’s heart fought against the lack of oxygen, all that great strong indomitable muscle flailing frantically for life. And then the room was filled with the high whine of the cardiac monitor as Hal flatlined. _All your show. Up to you._

“Go,” he said tersely to Clark, who punched the timer. The red numbers began counting down. Their steady beat was the only movement in the room, as they counted the seconds of Hal’s death. They watched the flick of the numbers. There was nothing to do now but wait. 

“Turn that off,” he said, and Clark reached to the cardiac monitor. The high shrill whine was muted, and the room was blanketed in silence. 

_Forty-five seconds down._

The first time he had met Hal, he had found the man unbelievably irritating. More than irritating; infuriating. His interference had put Batman at risk; that sudden flood of green light had enraged him. The man was too loud, too brash, too irreverent. And that mouth never stopped. 

_Fifty-one seconds down._

And then he had watched him set his own compound fracture and square his jaw and fly right into death. Or would have, if Bruce hadn’t stopped him. He had recognized something in that indomitable will. It had taken him a bit longer to recognize that while the mouth never stopped, neither did the brain, and that while Hal’s mouth was running fast, his brain was running even faster. Never stopping.

What was he running from?

_One minute._

He had known the man was beautiful, of course. No one in the League was what you would call hard to look at, and Bruce had an appreciation for beauty of all sorts. But still, there was something particularly magnetic about Hal’s beauty. He wasn’t more beautiful than Clark, for instance, or Diana, but there was something about the way he moved. The sound of his laugh, when he threw his head back with a kind of abandon nobody else in the League had. The flashing white of his grin, when he aimed a barb at Bruce. 

He was a bit surprised the man had taken an instant dislike to him, but Bruce wasn’t the sort to lose sleep over that. From the beginning, Bruce’s authority in the League had clearly bothered Hal. 

“Is it because I don’t have powers? Is that what you just can’t stand?” After a League meeting in those early months, and Bruce had had it up to here and beyond with Hal’s muttered asides. Lantern’s resentment only grew when it became evident Superman was always going to side with Batman. 

“Yeah, Bruce, that’s it. I’m sure it’s my own emotional problem, and not the fact that you treat everyone around you like idiots, you fascist cock-knob.”

“Question my authority just one more time.”

“This is a League, not some fifth-century oligarchy. Leading us in the field does NOT always mean you lead us in a meeting! That table is round for a reason, or had that not occurred to you before?”

“Huh.”

“Huh what? You disagree? What a surprise.”

“No, I’m just surprised you know the word oligarchy.”

“Fuck you,” Hal had ground out, and pushed past him. Clark’s face in the shadows, watching. Frowning at Bruce. “That. . . was not helpful.”

“The man is impossible.”

Clark had looked grim. “You two figure this out, or you’ll tear the League apart.”

_Two minutes._

The firefight on Cresh-Naar, and he was cut off. His own fault. But it had been unavoidable. “Go,” he had said into his comm, “get out of here now!” But then there had been a blaze of green light, and a firm hand around his arm, lifting him away. 

“I said to get out of here!”

“Lucky for you I don’t listen to orders. You’re bleeding.” 

“I’m fine.”

“For once in your life, shut up.” He had been encased in green light, and Cresh-Naari laser blasts were pounding at the green shell surrounding them. Bruce had seen the shudder of their protective shield with every blast, but Hal had paused in mid-air. “Hold still,” he had said, his voice quiet. And then there had been a hot green knife thrust clean through his side, or what had felt like it. He had cried out.

“You were bleeding out,” Lantern said. “Had to cauterize it. Sorry, I know that hurt like a motherfucker. You all right?”

Bruce had nodded, dizzy with the pain. The hand was still firmly around him, holding him up. He had come fully to in the Watchtower’s medbay, after surgery. It had been worse than he had thought. Clark’s concerned face was the first to swim into view, and then Diana’s. Leslie was there, and Barry. But beyond the circle of light, a brown head. Brown eyes that had met his, and then a slow smile. Bruce had tried to say something, to thank him. The brown head had ducked out of the room. Bruce had watched him go. 

_Three minutes seventeen seconds._

A quiet night at the monitoring station. He had thought he was alone, but Clark had come and sat down beside him, like he often did. “You don’t hate Lantern,” he had said. 

Bruce had said nothing. His cowl was up, which made lack of response easier. “I used to think you did,” Clark persisted. “I used to think you just could not stand him.”  


“Have I said something to make you change your opinion?”

“No. You haven’t said a thing. But people have autonomic responses, and they’re not always in control of those. I try to ignore them, give people privacy, but sometimes they’re strong enough that I can’t.”

“I’m pretty sure you have somewhere you need to be.”

“Bruce. Saying something to him is not completely out of the question. It could be that he feels the same way. It’s not impossible that—”

“What I _feel_ ," Bruce had said, “is that physical attractions are dangerous and unreliable indicators, and should be treated like a persistent rash—irritating, but finally inconsequential. Not unlike Lantern himself, by the way.”

Bruce had gotten up and gone to another monitoring station, just to get away from him. Clark had sighed. “Right,” he had said. “Well, I’m here to listen, if you ever need to talk.”

Bruce had kept his head down. 

_Three minutes forty-five._

“The two of us on a diplomatic mission. The universe has a pretty sick sense of humor, huh?”

“Or Superman does,” Bruce had muttered. 

“When we get there, you’ll need to let me do most of the talking. They’ve had contact with the Corps before, they’ll respect the uniform. Truth is, I have no idea what you’ll be needed for. I guess you can just enjoy the ride-along and let someone with experience take the helm here.”

“I see. And what is the extent of your diplomatic experience, again?”

“The Corps has been involved in—”

“The Corps may have been at the Yalta Conference for all I care, but you personally have been involved in none of that. You’re trained to fly planes and shoot at things, not to run your mouth. So why don’t you sit back and let a grown-up handle this one.”

“Zero to phenomenal douchebag in twenty-five seconds flat. You never disappoint, B-man.” Hal had laced his fingers behind his head and stretched, propping his long legs on the flight console. “Could be Clark knows what he’s doing,” Hal said after a while. “Could be that we are in fact the two most diplomatic members of the League. I mean, we’ve made it this far without homicide, am I right? And if the two of us can manage to survive a three-day trip through deep space without having killed each other on the way, it argues that we can pretty much do anything, I think.” 

He had flashed a sly grin at Bruce, and Bruce had felt the corners of his mouth tug in spite of himself. “There is an argument to be made, I suppose.”

“Well, if there’s an argument somewhere, I’m sure you’ll find it.”

“I’m not the one who finds it impossible to keep my mouth shut for more than seven seconds at a time.”

Hal rose, grin still in place. “Aaaaand just like that the moment’s over. Stay frosty, B.” He had clapped Bruce on the shoulder and headed to the back of the Javelin.

_Four minutes nineteen._

He counted down with the clock now. His fingers rested on the paddles. It would take more than one delivery of electrical current, he knew that. The mistake would be jumping the gun. They had to wait until the last possible second and beyond, if they could. They could not risk any of the nanovirus surviving; God only knew what they would mutate into, if he managed to revive any of them after oxygen deprivation.

Oxygen deprivation. Hal’s cells were screaming for oxygen now. “We cannot push it beyond five,” Leslie had said last night. “The risk of brain damage will be too great. Hal will not thank you for that.”

“Agreed,” he had said. 

_Four minutes thirty._

Every tick of the clock felt like it was reverberating in his bones. His bones. Hal’s bones, ground to powder. Today that would end. Today was the day they would win. He had made a promise. 

_Forty. Forty-one. Forty-two. Forty-three. Forty-four. Forty-five._

“Now!” he yelled, and Leslie and Clark both backed away. He pressed the paddles onto Hal’s bare chest and squeezed the triggers. Hal’s body jumped. “Again,” he said, and Leslie hit the charger. He saw Clark flip the cardiac monitor back on, so they could hear when they got a rhythm.

“Clear!” Again he shocked him; again Hal’s body jerked and fell back, unresponsive. The cardiac monitor’s whine was digging into his skull. 

“Clear!” Once again, and nothing. They had talked about the epi after three tries, but nothing had been decided. _Risky_ , Leslie had said. _The damage to the heart muscle. . ._

“Again.” He slammed the paddles on Hal’s chest. Jolt, and nothing. Every face in the observation area was inches from the glass. His world had narrowed to milliseconds. 

“Four minutes fifty-five,” Leslie said. 

“Give me the epi!” He reached for the syringe. They had marked it before, in case they needed to: a small black X on Hal’s left side, right at the ventricle. He slammed the syringe home, injecting the epi directly into the heart muscle. 

“Clear!” he shouted. 

“Bruce,” Leslie said.

“Clear!” He lunged over top of Hal’s body to reach the crank himself, and flipped the electrical charge higher. Who knew what variables they were combatting here? Maybe more charge was needed, maybe the nanobots had altered the electrical frequency his body responded to, it could be any number of things. 

_Five minutes._

“Again!” he said.

“Bruce.”

“ _Again!_ ” The jolt delivered to Hal’s body this time was enough to lift him six inches off the bed. “More epi,” he said to Leslie. “We need a second syringe. We can overcome the change in electrical frequency that way. Get me more epi.”

“No,” she said quietly.

“Clark,” he said in desperation. Clark’s eyes were grave, and watching him sadly. Would no one help him? Why were they all looking at him like that?

“ _No!_ ” he yelled, and he reached for the paddles again. He dialed the crank to maximum, knowing he would scorch Hal’s skin, knowing it was the only way. “Clear!” The smell of burning flesh was sickly-sweet, overcoming the antiseptic almost. There were black marks on Hal’s chest.

And then Clark was beside him, and there was a hand on his arm that he could not shake off, that would not let him go. “Bruce,” he said. “Stop. You need to let him—”  


“Get your hands off me! Clear!”

In two more seconds Clark’s grip on him would be unyielding, and he would not be able to save Hal. They were going to kill him, all of them. He had killed him. They were going to stop him, they were going to—

Like that first blinding flash of green light the first time he had met Hal, he knew what he had to do. He had less than a second to evade Clark’s tightening grasp. He lunged. The ring slid right into his fingers, like it had been waiting for him. Just like it had all those years ago, when he had slid it off Hal’s finger. _Hey, you can’t do that._

“ _ **NOW!**_ " he yelled, with all the force in his throat, with all the force of his will, with every atom of his body. He slammed the ring onto Hal’s chest, and the waves of green light blinded the room. The electricity of it hurled him into the wall, it was so powerful. He struggled to find his feet again, he had to get back in there, had to keep trying, had to—

_Blip._

They all froze, and watched the cardiac monitor.

_Blip._

He did not dare to breathe.

_Blip._

“Oxygen,” Leslie barked, and Clark had the mask pressed to Hal’s face, faster than Bruce could track the motion. She was back on the glucose monitor, and she had one hand on the paddles herself, in case another jolt were needed.

_Blip. Blip. Blip._

“Normal sinus,” Leslie announced, and in the observation area, he could see people hugging each other, could see a triumphant fist—Ollie’s?—raised into the air. He himself felt nothing. Not metaphorically, but literally; his arms were still half-numb from that last shock. He tried to swallow. His legs would not obey him. He stayed crumpled against the wall. 

He watched the first rise and fall of Hal’s chest. Leslie was busy with the monitors, ordering Clark about. She was flipping a number of buttons on the wall summoning the rest of her surgical team to come finish the job of stabilizing Hal, prep him for post-op. The party in the viewing area was continuing. Laughing, grinning, cheering faces.

He found his legs and made his way to the doors. He pushed through and found a bench in some deserted hallway. He slumped into it, and put his head in his shaking hands. 

He had thought he was done with crying. He had forgotten that not all tears were for sorrow. 

He couldn’t stop shaking, thinking about what he had just done, what he had almost not been able to do. And then there were arms around him, pulling him close. Someone sitting beside him. He didn’t have the strength to open his eyes, but he didn’t need to. He let himself collapse into the arms around him, let himself choke out the silent sobs of his release, his relief, his reprieve, in those arms that held him fast. 

“You,” murmured Jason into his hair, “are a fucking piece of work.”


	14. Chapter 14

“Astonishing,” Bruce murmured.

“It is,” Leslie said. “I wish I had a more clinical term for it, or could tell you the science behind what you’re looking at. But I fear it would be like – well, like a medieval philosopher attempting to explain nuclear fission. I don’t even have the language to describe this.”

They were standing in her lushly appointed office at Gotham General, staring at her lightboard. Attached to it were copies of Hal’s most recent bone scans. He narrowed his eyes, trying to understand what he was seeing. “All completely normal,” she said. “If your idea worked, I was prepared to see him nonetheless in a wheelchair for the rest of his life. I thought at best, we might be able to replace some more of his bones with the titanium alloys. There is no part of me that ever thought _this_ was possible.”

“Regeneration,” he said, studying the scan on the left.

“Exactly. I don’t know what else you would call it. It’s as though, in their rewriting of the cellular structure of Hal’s bones, the nanobots also encoded a way that their damage could be reversed. I have no idea what the possible use of such a mechanism would be, but—”

“Torture,” Bruce said. “They’re using it for torture. Turn these loose in your victim’s bloodstream, let them writhe in agonizing pain for a week or so, then remove them. Possibly with exactly the kind of trauma we had to put Hal through. Then a day later, you can start the process all over again. An endless cycle of agony and reprieve.”

“Dear God. I hope you’re wrong about that.”

“I’m not. I’m wondering if the attack on Hal was meant as a kind of test run. We’re going to have to go back to Devenar Five, try to locate the source of this tech, and notifying the Lantern Corps is probably the next step. Eradicating this tech is not going to be easy.”

She was smiling a little, as she looked at the scans with him. “There is such a thing as savoring a victory, you know.”

“Mm,” he said. “All a victory tells you is the location of your next battle.”

“Of course,” she sighed. 

“Thank you,” he said. “I am remiss. Thank you for all your hard work on this case, and your willingness to allow me some leeway. I am aware what professional risks you took.”

“Well, excuse my French, but if I gave a shit about that I wouldn’t be the Justice League’s doctor, now would I? Also, I’m not the one who pulled this out of the hat. This one was you, Bruce.”

He studied the scans again. “Do you think another biopsy will be necessary?”

“I’d like to perform several more, over a period of weeks. There’s so much we don’t know yet about the molecular structure of his bone now. Is it stronger? Weaker? Are there any side effects?”

“And you lecture me about savoring victories.”

“Point taken. I just don’t want to take any chances. This one—it was too close for comfort.”

“That it was.” He glanced at her. “Alfred is making noise about a celebratory dinner at the Manor sometime soon, with you as the guest of honor. I told him I would have to check with your schedule, of course.”

“Oh,” she said, looking mildly surprised, but not displeased. “I’m actually off this Thursday, but that’s my only night not on-call for a while.”

“This Thursday it is,” he said. “We will raise a glass in an attempt to savor.”

“Well,” she temporized. “It’s going to have to be without Hal, I’m afraid. I intend to keep him under close observation here for quite some time. But I’m hoping soon, if all goes well with our initial biopsies, I can move him for some rehabilitation. I was even thinking the Watchtower – that would be a great way for him to start feeling his way back into the world. I have facilities there almost the equal of what I have here, and I could keep an eye on him.”

Bruce nodded. “That sounds reasonable. I’m sure he would enjoy that.”

“Well why don’t you mention it to him, and see what he says.”

He glanced at his watch. “You’ll probably see him before I do. I have to get going, I’m afraid. If you wouldn’t mind, download some of those scans and send them to the Cave’s database, would you?”

“Of course.” She was looking at him curiously, as though she wanted to say something more – but then, that was how she often looked. 

He headed downstairs, taking the elevator past the patient floors. Alfred owed him one, about this dinner idea. It was just a hunch, but he trusted this hunch. He could be there for the first part of it, and then Batman could have some sort of emergency that would require him to excuse himself. Maybe he would tell Alfred the dinner was her idea. Some delicate manipulation might have to be involved, but he was confident Alfred could drive the deal home without any help from him. He was absorbed in thoughts of Alfred and Leslie, and he couldn’t have said why he did it, but as the elevator went slowly down, he pushed the button for the third floor. He didn’t let himself think about it. He told himself he just wanted to see. He would just look. And then he would be able to carry through on his resolution, of that much he was sure. But it couldn’t hurt just to look.

He took his time, slowly walking the long hallways, and he stopped outside room 374. The rooms on this floor were all sliding glass doors, and Hal’s room had the curtains half-drawn. The glass door was shut, probably because everyone inside was being too loud, and the floor nurses had had enough. Bruce positioned himself so that no one lying in the bed could see him, and he watched for just a minute. A minute couldn’t hurt. 

It was quite the celebration, apparently. The room was filled with helium balloons, and there was a speaker propped on the windowsill, with Barry playing DJ on his phone. The amount of flowers covering every available surface made the small room look like a funeral viewing parlor, and the people crammed inside made it even smaller. Dinah was telling some story or other, and Oliver was grinning, and Barry was doing some white-man’s dance over by the speaker, and Hal was. . . 

Bruce shifted a little so he could see his face, as he lay in the bed. He was sitting up, and he was laughing, laughing like he used to, with his head thrown back, laughing with his whole body, gesturing at Barry across the room. He might be in a hospital bed, but he looked every inch his old self, and he was clearly talking over everyone else in the room. His bed was littered with torn wrapping paper and ribbons, and there were crumbled remains of a cake on the table beside him, with a fork stuck in the top. 

He looked so intensely happy that Bruce could not resist the smile, and he stood transfixed watching them. And then he must have made some small unconscious motion, because Oliver glanced up, and saw him there. Oliver gave him a puzzled look. He saw Oliver start to wave him in, but quickly Bruce shook his head and drew back. Oliver’s puzzled look became a small frown. No one else had noticed. Oliver stared at him. Bruce turned and made his way back down the hallway, and left them to their party.

* * *

“So we send a small reconnaissance team to Devenar Five, is that the deal?” Guy Gardner was leaning back in his chair, glancing around the table. “How does this usually work? Because I can go ahead and pick my team members right now.”

“Awesome,” Jordan said. “The minute we’re playing dodge ball you can be captain. Until then, we decide as a group how we want to proceed. Superman, you’ve spent more time there than anyone, what do you think?” 

Clark leaned forward on the other side of the table. “It’s true I didn’t have much luck before, but I’m not sure I knew the right questions to ask. We’ve got to get this tech out of their hands, and find out who’s creating it before it spreads a little closer to home. I think we have a clearer idea of who we’re hunting down now and why. Batman?”

Bruce remained motionless behind the cowl, and his lenses were up. It allowed him to glare with distaste at Gardner, and also, in truth, gave him a little bit of necessary distance. This was the first League meeting with Hal back at the table, and while he trusted himself, the lenses would cover any unintentional errors. “It’s got to be a four-person team,” he said. “We don’t know what we’re going to encounter, and it will be safest to work in pairs. It’s more than one pair can handle, though, and we might very well need to be doing some underground operations.”

“Devenar Five is a patriarchal society,” Diana pointed out. “My presence could make things more difficult, or it might be enough to throw them off their game. They might underestimate me.”

“Agreed,” Bruce said. “You should go, and probably as leader.”

“I’ve been before,” said Clark. “It makes sense for me to be there.”

“All right, I’m in,” Hal said. “I wouldn’t mind having a hand in whoever decided to have a little fun with me. But you know, Devenar’s like ninety-five percent water. I’m thinking. . .”

“Arthur,” Bruce said. “You’re right, good call.”

“Plus, it will teach him to skip League meetings. You don’t show up, you’re on the committee.”

“Ho up there, wait wait wait, now just hold on a got-damn minute,” Guy said. “Are you shitting me?”

Every head at the table swiveled to him. Bruce stayed still. “I mean, come on. Hal. You really think that’s a good idea, you being in the field like that?”

“ _Senior Green Lantern Jordan_ will do,” Hal said, and Bruce could see the muscle jump in his jaw. “And actually, I didn’t ask you whether you thought it was a good idea or not. We’ve come to a decision, and—”

“You fucking kidding me?”

He had never much been bothered by Hal’s admittedly colorful language, but every time this man dropped another profanity, it was like fingernails on a blackboard. To be fair, the man’s whole personality was like a rusty spoon scraping the bottom of a metal pan, at decibel twenty. “Guy,” Hal was saying. He was making an effort to ratchet it down, and that was smart. “I understand you’re eager to be in the field. But this is a case we’re familiar with, and I think that this time—”

“What, you think this is just ‘cause I want to be in the field? Fuck no, I just want you _not_ to be in the field! Come on, everyone’s thinking it, am I the only one saying it here? What the hell business do you have in the field when you can’t even walk straight?”

Hal was quiet, and Bruce could see the steady jump of the muscle in the side of his jaw. Turning this into a pissing contest with Gardner was the surest way to lose; that was exactly what the man wanted. Self-restraint would be the way to go here, and fortunately Jordan seemed to have developed some of it. "Your concern is touching," he said, "but you'd be surprised how little walking is an issue when I'm _flying_. But what is an issue is where we start once we get to Devenar. I'm thinking that—”

“Oh yeah? Where’re you gonna hide your cane while you fly, you gonna strap it to your back?”

"Turn around and bend over, I'll show you exactly where I’m gonna hide my cane.” 

"You're out of line, Guy,” Clark said, with a scowl.

“So we’re all just gonna sit here and pretend everyone who’s sitting at this table deserves to be here? When we can all _see_ the goddamn problem?”  
Barry and Oliver both started talking at once, and Ollie looked red in the face, he was so angry. But Clark cut across them both. 

“I think we’re about to have that conversation,” Clark said grimly. The crackle of red in the corners of his eyes was surely not accidental. “And it’s not going to go well for you.”

“Fine, threaten me all you want. But I hear the time was, you cared about what happened out in the field too. Having someone out there who can’t pull his weight puts everyone in danger, but I’m the asshole for pointing that out? I bust my ass here for months, but the second _he_ gets back—” He jerked his thumb at Hal. “Well then you could give a shit about anything I have to say, is that how it goes?”

“In all fairness, Guy,” Hal said, leaning closer, “I’m pretty sure everyone thought you were an asshole before I got back, too.”

“Ah, go fuck yourself.” He half-rose from the table.

“Nah, I’ve got your mom for that, so sit your ass back down. Listen up Gardner, you don’t have to like me and I don’t have to like you, but we do have to work together. And here’s another thing you might not like: in the League we’re all equals, but as far as the Corps is concerned, I’m the senior Lantern in this sector, and when I say jump, you say how goddamn high. That’s a little something called the chain of command.” Hal’s voice had gone steely. He had been wrong to worry about Jordan, who could take care of himself. Military authority was the way to get through to someone like Gardner. 

“I guess some of us are a little more equal than others,” Gardner said, his face flushing.

“I guess so,” Hal said. “So let’s say you worry about doing your job, and leave me to worry about doing mine. We clear?”

Gardner pushed back from the table. “Crystal,” he said through gritted teeth, and stood up to go. He was a thick-set man, and his tread was heavy, and as he rose to go, he tripped. He stumbled over the chair, and the chair knocked directly into Hal’s leg, and as Gardner struggled to right himself his foot caught Hal’s, wrenching his leg. Bruce saw the blood drain from Hal’s face in a clear wash from the top of his hairline down.

“Oh wow, sorry about that, these chairs are not very stable, huh? You guys really oughta look into that.” He stalked out of the council room. Only Bruce had been close enough to see exactly what had happened. Bruce knew better than to move, because the boiling lava in his veins would not stop until he had beaten Gardner to an unconscious bleeding pulp. He watched Hal master his breathing. Hal’s hands were spread on the table, palms flat, bracing himself. Bruce’s hand, resting on the table, curled slowly into a fist. Hal looked right at him then, steady on, and shook his head, just the barest motion. _Stand down_ , it said, and Bruce obeyed. Gardner was Hal’s battle to fight, and interfering would not be of help to him.

“Well,” Hal said, covering his swallow of air with a stretch of his arms behind his head. “Good meeting guys, but I’m gonna put this out there: all new hires, we talk it over first. What do you say?”

Ollie gave a bark of a laugh. “Man, for two bucks I’d hire that dude to eat shit pie seven days a week. Where the hell did the Corps dig him up?”

“Texas, I’m guessing,” Hal said, to general laughter, and Bruce subsided, though his chest was still pounding. Clark could hear it, of course, and glanced over at him in what he probably thought was a discreet way. Bruce just kept his gaze fixed on the opposite wall, and Hal didn’t look his way again for the rest of the meeting.

* * *

The meeting ran longer than usual, not least because there was quite a bit to catch Lantern up on. And himself, too, truth be told; his world in the last few months had narrowed substantially. He was realizing just how much he had missed, and just how much Clark had been fielding on his own. Well, he could shoulder some of that burden again. It was time to pick his life back up where he had let it drop. 

He had thought it would be hard to see Hal at the meeting today, but it hadn’t been. The Hal he had come to know the last seven months—that had begun to seem like another Hal, another Bruce, another life entirely. Only once had that illusion faltered, when Hal had looked directly at him and shaken his head in that small gesture, knowing Bruce would read it and trust it for the warning it was. But it had taken everything in him not to close his fingers on Gardner’s treacherous throat. 

“Yo Bats,” called the abrasive voice, and he froze. He had been striding directly to the zeta platform, and Clark and Diana were with him, talking about the Devenar mission; ordinarily he would have stayed so the three of them could meet in private and discuss in more detail, but patrol tonight would not wait. He had let too many things slide in the past few months, and the protection of Gotham was one of them. So he was halfway to the platform when Gardner’s voice accosted him.  
The three of them turned together, and he saw Diana’s hand stray to her lasso. He knew she itched to tighten it on the man’s balls, and she hadn’t even seen what Bruce had seen. “Unbelievable,” Clark muttered. Bruce stepped forward. 

“Gardner,” he said. “Let me explain to you why talking to me right now is a particularly unwise idea.”

The man was still red in the face. “Look, I got carried away, all right? Sometimes I shoot my mouth off before I think, I admit it. But that doesn’t mean that what I’m saying ain’t right.”

“If what you’re saying is that Hal Jordan is unqualified to do his job, when both the Lantern Corps and the Justice League disagree with you, then you are wrong.”

“Yeah? Have you flown with him? You checked up on any of his combat skills recently? How you think he’s gonna do in hand-to-hand, whack the shit out of people with his cane?”

“You listen here—” Clark started, but Bruce put a hand on his arm, lowering it. 

“This discussion is over,” he said. “But I will tell you this. You disrespect Hal Jordan again, in my presence or out of it, and you’re out of the League.”

“So maybe if I suck your cock good as I hear he does, I get to stay?”

Part of him wished he could say he had acted on sheer instinct, without thinking. But in fact, every rational atom of his brain had been fully awake for it, and enjoying it immensely, when he had decked Gardner to the floor. It had only taken one punch after all, which was moderately disappointing. More disappointing was that Gardner was completely unconscious. He groaned, mumbled something, and then his head lolled back to the floor. The three of them stood over top of him, studying him.

“One punch,” Clark said with approval.

“Not very considerate,” Diana said. “You knew I wanted a chance.”

“You can take next time.”

“We should save his pride,” Clark said. “Drag him into a room somewhere so he can sleep it off.”

“Or we could pants him, and leave him here.” They both looked at him. 

“Somewhere, Hal Jordan is very proud of you right now,” Clark said, and Bruce laughed, and Diana did too. They stepped over Gardner’s inert form on their way to the zeta platform, and for a few seconds the hollow weight in Bruce’s chest felt a fraction lighter.

* * *

When he woke in the hospital, he had known immediately.

It was hard to say how he knew. He was breathing, and he was alive, so at least that part had worked, but how could he have known about anything else? It was hard to describe. He had come to think of the absence of pain as some loud noise in another room that was suddenly stilled, but this was different—this was the noise inside of him. As though the incessant grinding of his bones to powder had made a kind of constant background noise, and the minute it stopped, he knew. He just knew. 

He was weak as hell, of course. It was days before he could even sit up, but even that was a kind of delicious lassitude. His bones were regenerating, Leslie had explained to him, and that was a process that would take time, though as it turned out, not nearly as much time as she had thought it would. Shockingly little time. Within three days, he was sitting all the way up; within four, he was walking. And with every hour, strength flooded back into him: strength, and health, and life. Sometimes he would just laugh aloud at the sheer joy of it all. Had colors always been this bright? Had sunlight always been so clean, so sharp, and other people—had they always been this endlessly fascinating, this complex, this wonderful? The universe was full of beauty, and compassion, and happiness he had never known existed. It was hard to describe to people. _Take your last breath,_ he might say. _Suck in all the air and all the light and color and sound you can, one last time. Say good-bye to all of it. And then open your eyes, and get it all back. What do you see?_

There were always people in his room, those first few days. It was always a celebration, and he was always at the center of it. His chest was so full of happiness it felt like it might crack open. Except, part of his happiness was missing. The chief part, really. Always, always his eyes were on the door, waiting for the one face he never saw, the one voice he never heard. Everything in him was waiting. 

And there came a day when Hal knew he would not come. He sat by the window for a full hour that day, just staring at his hands resting on his lap. He had his life back, he had everything back he never thought he would have, and now he knew what the cost of it had been. His happiness would be lined with sorrow, now, but that was something else he couldn’t fix. He had learned a lot, in the last year, about what you could change, and what you couldn’t. It wasn’t a question of the sorrow outweighing the happiness, or the other way around. They were both the same thing, both parts of each other. _Somewhat alike,_ as someone in another life had said once. 

The night after his first League meeting, he stretched his leg out on the sofa and poked at his ramen while watching the game he had recorded earlier. He considered getting up and grabbing a beer from the fridge, but it had been a motherfucker of a day, and yeah, his leg was screaming murder at him, so he really did not feel like getting up again. His leg was the one thing that couldn’t really get fixed, because you didn’t regrow bones that had been removed and replaced with a titanium alloy. So he still needed the brace on that one, and he was always going to need the cane too. Sometimes he might need the wrist crutch too, depending. He didn’t mind about the leg that much, anymore; the pain was only occasional, if he exerted himself too much, and all in all it seemed like a small price to pay. 

The meeting had been about what he had expected, the truth was.

He had handled it fine, he knew he had, and dismissed Gardner like the turd he was, but it didn’t mean he forgot what had been said. Men like Gardner did not care for being humiliated in public. Men like Gardner did not take orders from cripples. For a minute, as he sat there poking at his ramen, he felt the wrench of this afternoon not in his leg, but in his gut. Gardner saw who he really was: a cripple who didn’t belong there, a lightweight who didn’t belong in the field. Broken, incompetent. Easy enough to brush aside Gardner’s words in the moment; harder to ignore them, when they had burrowed their way inside you, when they echoed everything you were telling yourself in the quiet dark. 

He shoved his fork back into his ramen and ate steadily. His weight was coming back up, but not fast enough. He would need to work harder. 

_Bang bang bang._

He groaned at the knock on the door. He had completely forgotten he had told Ollie he could bring the rest of his garage sale finds over tonight. The man had become utterly fucking obsessed with garage sales, ever since his success with the Playboys in Traviswood, and he had taken to scouring the suburbs for garage sale signs on the weekend and terrifying the shit out of people by showing up and buying all of their useless crap. Hal had even gone with him once. 

“How much for all of it?” Ollie had said, this manic grin on his face, and the slack-jawed elderly woman and her husband with his belly hanging out under his T shirt had just sort of stared at him in wonderment, and at the fire-engine red Lotus parked in their driveway, with a U Haul behind it. Ollie had given them two thousand dollars for everything they were selling, in cash. They had sort of stood there like they were being pranked, and Ollie had loaded everything into the U-Haul as fast as he could, like he was afraid they were going to change their minds. 

_Dinah, as a mental health professional, are you at all concerned for your husband?_ he had texted her, watching Ollie, and she had texted back _every second I’m alive_.

“You in the service?” the old man had said, and Hal had looked hastily up from his phone to find the man staring at him from under a billed cap. The eyes in the grizzled face were kindly.

“I. . . yeah,” he said. It was true enough. 

“Eighty-first airborne in Nam,” the old man said, extending the hand that wasn’t leaning on a cane, and Hal shook it. “Came back in one piece, though. More’n I can say for a lot of boys I knew.”

“Yeah, me too, mostly,” Hal said with a grin. “Threw out some extra parts.”

“Well, looks like you didn’t need ‘em anyway,” he said.

“You’re probably right about that.”

“Me, I just got Agent-Oranged all over the place. Ate my spine right up. Not good for much after that,” he said affably, and Hal realized the cane was not a recent acquisition. The plates on the Buick parked over to the side read _Disabled Veteran_.

“I know the feeling,” Hal said.

“Come on inside, I wanna show you something.” And so Hal had followed the man into the dark carpeted interior of their suburban split-level, all the way back to the den, lined with pictures of the man in his younger days, and plaques from his time in the service. His purple heart was framed over the mantel. Hal found himself looking at it, and thinking about his father’s. It had been years since he had seen it; Amber had probably sold it at some point, to make rent. He couldn’t quite look away from it.

The old man was talking about his buddies, and reliving old firefights, and Hal listened politely, with only half an ear, and it made him feel. . . a little less alone, somehow. When Ollie had come in search of him, the man had written his phone number down for Hal. “You should talk about things,” he said, clasping Hal’s hand in farewell. “You know, work through it. It’s what they tell me down at the VA. They say it’s good to get it off your chest.”

“Oh, I. . I think I’m doing all right, thanks.”

The man had just looked at him, a funny tilt to his head. “Sure, son,” he said, and Hal went quickly to the car, or as quick as he could manage these days. 

After one of his treasure hunts, Ollie would dig through the collected mountains of his plunder, laughing in delight at all the strange shit he had found—sending most of it to the dumpster, of course, but keeping some of the weirdest bits to decorate the apartment with, to Dinah’s increasing irritation. And Ollie had wanted to show him some of the best finds from his most recent score, and Hal had said tonight would be fine, and now he had to haul his goddamn ass up off his sofa and look interested, instead of shoving yet another pair of porcelain praying Jesus hands up Ollie’s backside like he wanted to. The ones with the painted fingernails, though, those were the creepiest. 

“Yeah, yeah,” he sighed. Ollie had a key, of course, but he could never seem to remember where he had put it. “Please let me get my crippled ass off the sofa and open the door for you,” he muttered. 

And then he opened the door, and it wasn’t Ollie. 

“Oh,” he said, and Bruce said, “Hi,” and Hal just kept standing there, looking at him.

It took him a few seconds to remember basic manners. “Ah. . .come on in,” he said, and stood aside.

Bruce came and stood in the middle of his apartment, and then said nothing. “Um, okay,” Hal said. “Can I. . . get you anything?”

“I’m good, thanks.”

“Okay. Mind if I ask what you’re doing here?”

Bruce was intent on a certain point on the floor, over by the sofa. “I came to see how you were after the meeting today. It was not an easy meeting, and not an easy way to return to the League.”

“Oh. Well, I’m fine, as you can see.”

“Yes.”

There was another silence, but Hal was not really in a mood to help him out. “I would hope you do not think Guy Gardner speaks for anyone in the League,” he said. “His words were out of order, and they were untrue. You’re combat ready, and you’re ready for this mission, and no one in the League doubts that.”

“I know that.”

“You should not doubt it either.”

Hal said nothing to that. He would not let this turn into a conversation about what was inside his head. Inside his head was not a place Bruce got to be anymore. “At any rate,” Bruce said, apparently correctly interpreting Hal’s silence. “I was wondering. Damian has been. . . missing your presence around the house a great deal. Missing you, in fact. He has been. . .” Bruce frowned at that far-off point he was fixated on. “Things with Damian have been difficult, of late. When you were around he was more. . . focused, in many ways. I was wondering if you might consider spending some time with him.”

“Of course,” Hal said. “I’d love to. Tell you what, if he’s free Saturday I can take him to Ferris with me. He might enjoy climbing over some fighter jets and hanging out at the airstrip. I can show him the desk where I sit.” He winced at the trace of bitterness there, and hastily amended it. “I mean, my office has a hell of a view too, right up in the tower. It might not be as exciting as flight deck, but it has its good points.” 

“Thank you,” Bruce said. “I’m sure he would love that.”

He was glancing around the apartment now, like there was more he wanted to say. Maybe he was waiting for Hal to invite him to sit. Well, he would be waiting a while. “I was wondering if perhaps you had moved,” Bruce said. “Three floors up is a bit of a challenge, I would think.”

“It’s fine. I manage fine.”

“Well, that’s. . . good.” Bruce was now studying the floor directly in front of him. “However,” he said. “I wouldn’t want you to think there were no other options available to you. You are very missed, at the Manor. Alfred would be thrilled if you decided to move back, and I think it would be the best thing possible for Damian. Also there is a brindle cat who is most disgruntled at your absence.”

“The cat misses me,” Hal said. 

“Yes.”

Hal sighed. “It’s. . . a very generous offer. I appreciate it, I do. But you and I both know why I’m not going to say yes.”

Bruce looked up then, in evident surprise. He really didn’t know. This was really news to him. He truly had no idea why Hal might find the Manor an uncomfortable place to be. Hal was torn between wanting to beat the man senseless with his cane, and wanting to fall on the sofa laughing his ass off. “Look,” he said. “I can’t do the thing you do.”

“The thing I do?”

“Yeah, the thing where you just shut it off, like it didn’t happen. I can’t do that, all right? I can’t compartmentalize like that. So no, I’m not going to move into your house. I can’t make things between us like they never were. I get that that is what you want, but that’s just not me. So thanks, I appreciate the offer, but I think I’m good.”

Bruce wasn’t looking at the floor anymore. He wasn’t looking anywhere but right at Hal. Hal sighed again, and he gave up, and hobbled to the sofa arm, where he perched himself, to get the weight off his leg. He shouldn’t have taken the brace off the minute he got home. So much for looking suave, but he was several clicks beyond caring. He stretched the leg out and winced a little. “Look,” he said again. “I’m not mad. I swear I’m not. I mean, yeah, at first I was. At first I was pissed as hell.”

“Mad,” Bruce repeated. He looked a little white around the lips. 

Hal crossed his arms and studied him. “I know what you did for me,” he said. “I know you saved my life. By the way, I watched the video of what happened in that operating room, I know what you did. You saved my life, not just that day, but every day of, hell, most of the past year. I know for a fact I would not be here today if it weren’t for you, and I will never not be grateful for that.”

“Hal,” Bruce said. It had a strange sound to it.

“No, I get it,” Hal said, holding up his hand. “I really do. Because I know you, all right? I know you pretty well. And I figured it out.”

“Figured what out, exactly?”

Hal gave him a rueful smile. It was impossible to be angry with the man when he was standing right in front of you, larger than life, in all his brilliant impossible Bruce-ness. “Figured out you,” he said. “It’s the puzzle. That’s what you love. Any puzzle, anything you can figure out, anything that unbelievable mind of yours can wrap itself around. You can always figure them out, no matter how hard they are. And that’s what I was. I was a puzzle. I was the best puzzle of all, I mean how could you not love a puzzle like that? But then, when the puzzle is solved. . . when it’s over, you don’t really need to keep it around. It doesn’t have any more meaning, any more than yesterday’s crossword.”

Bruce’s whole face was white now, as drained of color as he was certain his own had been this afternoon, when Gardner had pulled that stunt. Hal sighed. He shouldn’t have said anything. He should have kept his damn mouth shut. It wasn’t the man’s fault that he was who he was, and no one would ever change him. But still.

“Do you know how long I waited?” he said quietly. “Do you know how many days? At first I thought, he’s just really busy. Or, you know, he’s exhausted, which would make sense. I know you almost killed yourself, doing what you did for me. You deserved a break. But I waited. I kept sitting there in that hospital, waiting. I kept thinking, he’ll show up any day now, any minute.” 

Bruce didn’t look white anymore. He looked like a man who was bleeding internally. 

“I’m not saying any of that to make you feel bad,” Hal said. “It’s just who you are. I’m trying to say, I’m not mad about it. You don’t need to feel weird around me, ever. I’m your friend, and I will always have your back, no matter what.”

Bruce swallowed, licked his lips. He looked around at the chair behind him. “May I. . . may I sit down,” he said.

“I think. . . I think maybe you should go on home. It’s just that I. . . it’s kind of been a hell of a day. It’s been—” He turned his face aside. “It’s just been quite a day.”

Bruce nodded. “Of course,” he said. “Well. I will head home then. I will be brief. I was just going to say that you are right, about me and puzzles. But you were wrong when you say, I always figure them out. The most important ones of all, the ones to do with people—those are the ones I can’t figure out. Those are the ones I have no idea how to solve.”

“Bruce, you don’t have to—”

“Please listen,” he said, and there was such quiet urgency in his voice. “Please listen to me, and then you never have to listen again. I won’t speak of it again. But I can’t bear to have you think that about me, or that I—” He was clenching and unclenching his hands. “You didn’t get to choose any of it,” he said.

“I. . . what?”

“What happened to you. Your injury, the nanovirus, the destruction of your life, you didn’t choose any of that. And needing to be at Wayne Manor, needing to be so. . . closely associated with me. That. . . that association was maybe not something you would have chosen, had you been—in a different place. You never had. . . chosen me before. You never had done anything but dislike me before. I wanted to. . . give you time and space to choose. I thought you deserved that much. That was why I. . . I thought that you. . .” He stopped. He wasn’t looking at Hal. He shut his eyes. 

“Oh, holy shit,” Hal said. 

He could probably do it. He could probably stretch across and reach his crutch, from where he was perched on the sofa arm, and he could probably get a couple of really good blows in before Bruce could counter. The crutch was much heavier than the cane, much more satisfying. And maybe Bruce would be so startled that he could do more than get a couple of good ones in; maybe he could pound him into the carpet like he was longing to. Well. In more ways than one. 

“Okay,” Hal said, “I take it back about you being brilliant.”

“I could not bear for you to think that about me,” Bruce said. “Or to believe that I thought of you like that. We don’t have to talk about this anymore. But please believe that I will never, never stop—” Ironically, he stopped. He shut his eyes again. “You’re right,” he resumed. “You’re right to be done with me. But for what it’s worth, I will never forget what I managed to destroy, or how I hurt you. I will also never forget the very great privilege that was mine, of once being close to you. I will always. . .” Again a verb seemed to fail him. They stood in shared silence for a moment. Hal’s brain was racing, his chest thudding. 

“I will leave you to your evening, then,” Bruce said. “Please don’t get up, I can show myself out.” The mask of courtesy was back on his face, the blankness of before.   
Funny to think Hal had once thought that face unreadable. It was the most open face in the world, with everything written across it for anyone to see, as long as you knew the language. Well, Hal was good with languages. 

“Stop,” Hal said, and Bruce did. 

“Come back over here,” he said, and Bruce did. 

Hal sighed. “Man,” he said. “We are about to have the mother of all fights. It is gonna be a humdinger. It is gonna be a huge motherfucker. I am gonna swear, and throw things. It is gonna start with how people with disabilities are still actual _people_ , and how being sick or disabled does not mean you don’t know how to make choices, and it does not mean you don’t know what you’re doing. So that’s just Part One. Part Two is probably gonna be all about communication, how sometimes you might just wanna pick up your phone and send a quick text that says, _hey, I’m thinking about dropping out of your life and never talking to you again, and here are the reasons why, you got any thoughts about that?_ And then for Part Three, well, that’s gonna be a bit of a grab-bag, but don’t worry, I’m sure we can map it as we go. You with me so far?”

“I—”

“Nah, never mind, rhetorical question. My point is, this fight, it is gonna take a lot out of both of us. So I’m thinking we should rest up first. And. . . there are other things that need to come first. Please just come here.”

“I’m. . . here. What are you—”

“Hi,” Hal said, hoisting himself up and extending his hand. “Hal Jordan. I’m thinking maybe a fresh start is in order here.”

“Bruce Wayne,” he murmured, taking Hal’s hand. Hal tried to ignore the electric jump on his skin when Bruce clasped his hand. 

“Wow,” he said. “I normally am not one to take things quite so fast, but you are all kinds of gorgeous, and I’m thinking I might just want to skip the whole getting-to-know-you conversation part.”

“Is that so,” he said softly, and there was the most delicious small twitch of muscle at the corner of Bruce’s mouth. Hal wanted to lick it. 

“So how would you feel,” Hal said, “if instead, I just fucked your brains out right here on this sofa, until you come so loud the neighbors have to call the police?”

“I don’t know.”

“Oh, you don’t know?”

“I don’t know,” Bruce said, and his face was so close to Hal’s, so close. “You think you can manage to make me come that loud?”

Hal turned his face too, and now their faces were brushing against each other, teasing, teasing. He could feel the rasp of Bruce’s stubble against his. One of them really should have shaved. 

“God, Bruce,” he gasped, and as if that was all the invitation he needed, Bruce’s mouth was on his. It was not gentle. Hal did not want gentle. “Fuck,” he panted, when he came up for air. “Oh Jesus—” Bruce’s mouth was on his neck. He got his arms around Bruce, wrenched him back to his mouth. He shoved his tongue so far down Bruce he was afraid he might choke him. It was all he could do not to crawl down inside him. And Bruce was right there with him, Bruce’s kisses were just as savage and hungry. 

“Okay,” he husked in Bruce’s ear, “not to kill the super sexy mojo thing we’ve got going on, but I am gonna have to get off the leg in a sec, think we can find a sexy way to do that?”

“Efficient now, sexy later,” Bruce murmured back, and he maneuvered them onto the sofa, his arms firmly around Hal, easing him. “Better?”

“Oh yeah, definitely better. Back to where we were. Was I saying something sexy before?”

“I don’t remember, there isn’t much blood above my neck.”

Hal started laughing, but he couldn’t help it. It was like the joy of before, the joy of the not-dying, only this was somehow a thousand times better, because this was—okay, he needed to stop before he started thinking of fucking Bruce as his reason for living, but for the next hour or so, it was definitely gonna be that. Better make that three hours.

“Okay, I don’t know if I’ve mentioned this,” he said, torqueing them so he was more or less on top of Bruce, “but I happen to be fucking fantastic in bed. I feel like this is something you have not really had a chance to know.”

“That’s where you’d be wrong,” Bruce said. “I have had many fantasies over the years that have proven that to be the case.”

Hal found his mouth again, and tipped that lovely jaw closer, but then his hands were wandering again, pulling that gorgeous rock-hard body in closer, and God just to hump that body, just to feel it up against him, to have his hands and mouth full of Bruce Bruce Bruce—

“Wait a minute.” Hal pulled back, narrowed his eyes at him. “Many fantasies over the _years_?”

“Ah,” Bruce said. “Let’s just. . . move past that, for the moment.”

“Over the _years_?”

“Shhh,” Bruce said, and there were chapped lips brushing his, a hand that was working his bulge, fingers twined in his hair. 

“Mmkay,” Hal murmured, going boneless as that hand set up a steady rub. “Just saying, I can tell you right now what Part Three of the fight is going to be about.”

“Better do some strength training then,” Bruce whispered, pulling Hal’s mouth to his again.


	15. Chapter 15

All total lies, of course. 

He had told Bruce he was fucking fantastic in bed, which objectively speaking, he was, in actual life. But it was just, after so long of not having actually had sex, and then for it to be _Bruce_ , Bruce of all people, stripped naked (and Jesus Christ could he just stop a moment over that one, to reflect on the fucking symphony that was Bruce’s naked body) and in his bed, and rubbing against him and groaning in that _voice_ —yeah, Hal was not gonna last long. 

They had not even made it to the bed, the first time. 

Bruce had pushed Hal’s shirt up and gotten his hands on him, and Hal’s hands had been groping Bruce, and they had ended up just humping like hungry teenagers, fumbling with each other’s zips. He wasn’t even entirely sure how they had managed it, but by unspoken agreement they had just gotten each other off, fast. The positioning had been a little awkward, because they were on the sofa, and the sofa was a tight fit when it was just him, but with the two of them plus his leg it was a complete disaster, and it only worked because they were so desperate to get their hands on each other that it wouldn’t have mattered if they were lying on a bed of nails. 

“You beautiful fucking bastard,” Hal groaned, and Bruce ground down into him. “Oh yes, fuck, come on—”

“Hal, I can’t last,” Bruce panted in his ear, and that was all it took for Hal to shoot, his cock squeezed in between them. Bruce had been right behind him, those fingers digging into his shoulders, and after that they had more or less slid to the floor. Round two had at least happened in his bed, and that had been slower, and they had teased each other more. Hal had a new favorite thing in life, and that was Bruce undone and teetering on the knife-edge of coming, because he made this gasping sound deep down in his throat, and that was somehow a noise that went straight to Hal’s cock. 

Fucking was slightly problematic, but he wasn’t going to let that stop them. Every instinctive position Hal tried was one that put too much stress on his leg, until finally Bruce said _stop_ and pushed Hal flat on the bed, so he could just lie there. And then he had climbed on top of Hal, and that was what they did: Bruce riding his cock slowly, slowly, their eyes on each other, hands clasped in a death-grip, until Bruce’s eyes slid shut and his mouth parted and Hal watched him give himself to pure pleasure. He held on through Bruce’s orgasm, but only just. Bruce groaned out loud, and that was the thing that undid Hal, and his cock was spurting, he was coming so hard, buried in Bruce’s beautiful body, his own body arching so hard he was glad his regenerated bones appeared to be stronger than ever before, because damn but it felt like his spine was snapping in two. He had come so hard. 

“Didn’t think you would like that,” he murmured as Bruce collapsed down on him, and their arms closed around each other. 

“Didn’t think I would like sex?” Bruce’s voice was a bit slurry.

“Getting fucked. Didn’t think that would be your thing.”

“Mm,” was all Bruce had managed, and that was fun to know. So apparently blinding orgasm was what it took to render the man inarticulate. But he came back online in a few minutes, and propped himself on his elbow beside Hal, stroking Hal’s chest, studying his body like this would be the only chance he would get, like it was the only thing he ever wanted to be looking at. And then he had met Hal’s eyes.

“Take the meds,” he said.

“I’m fine.”

“Hal.”

“Yeah, I know, it’s just—I’m gonna go down hard if I do that.”

Bruce lifted Hal’s hand and brushed the fingers on his face, against his lips. _Tender_ , Hal thought. That was the word he was looking for. No one had ever been like this in bed with him before. “So go down hard,” Bruce said. “You need it.”

“Yeah. It’s just. . .this is not exactly a night I want to sleep away.” And he tried to return the tenderness, a little. He brushed his hand on the side of Bruce’s face, on his hair. 

Bruce stretched across him to the pill bottle beside the bed, and shook out two. “I’ll be here when you wake up,” he said. “I’m not going anywhere. Take the damn meds.”

So Hal had sighed, and swallowed them, and sure enough his eyes had drifted shut, and the warm pillowy darkness had cradled him. Or maybe that had been something else cradling him, he couldn’t tell. His sleep was sure and deep and long.

* * *

For long hours Bruce didn’t sleep, because he couldn’t make himself surrender consciousness. Hal had fallen asleep more or less across him, and Bruce maneuvered that long body so Hal’s head was on his chest. He propped himself up a bit, so he had a better view, and he watched him sleep. Felt him sleep. Hal was asleep in his arms, and whatever he could have done in this life or another to deserve this, he had no idea. He had come so close, through little fault but his own, to losing this chance. 

In that operating room, they had only had fifteen seconds. _A narrow window to be aiming for_ , Leslie had called it, and of course in the end he had transgressed it—looking back at the time signatures, he had gone seven seconds beyond that outer limit they had set themselves, and had been well into the danger zone for serious brain damage. But sometimes the window was even narrower than that. They had come so close to misunderstanding each other forever, to losing this forever. It had been Hal who had saved them from that. But it had been too near a thing for him ever to forget it. _Too close for comfort,_ as Leslie had said. 

He didn’t know how long he lay there, Hal cradled on his chest. He couldn’t see the clock from where he was, and he wouldn’t shift Hal. He pulled the blankets up around Hal; his old instinct that might never go away, the imperative of keeping him warm. At some point he heard a key in the lock. He considered getting up and closing the bedroom door, but rejected it: he would not disturb Hal. 

“Hey Hal?” said Oliver’s voice. Bruce could see him through the doorway. He was carrying a milk crate stuffed with something. “Sorry it ended up being so late, man.”

Bruce heard him thunk the milk crate down on a table. Heard him striding around the apartment, looking for Hal. And then he was standing at the bedroom door, and Bruce met his eyes, and he did not move his arms from around Hal. Oliver stood there for a second, looking at the two of them, no reaction on his face. He walked away.

In five more seconds he was back. He came into the bedroom and sat down on the edge of the bed, next to Bruce. He had a pad and pen in his hand. 

_Is he okay?_ he scribbled on it, and handed it to Bruce. 

Bruce considered. He knew it was a complicated question Oliver was asking, and it wasn’t just about Gardner or the League of the state of his leg. _He will be,_ Bruce wrote. 

Oliver nodded, like that was good enough. And then he picked up the pen again. _Are you okay?_ he wrote, and he underlined the _you_ three times. Bruce frowned at it. Always the boy two forms above him, looking out for him, just like he had at school. But Ollie’s eyes were grave, and full of concern, and possibly he was not a condescending older schoolboy, but a friend. Such things were possible, and if the last few hours of his life could happen, then anything could. Bruce picked up the pen. 

_I am now,_ he wrote, and Oliver’s face broke into a wide, happy grin. He rose to go, and leaned over to squeeze Bruce’s shoulder as he did. 

Oliver came back in the bedroom one more time, to perch a unicorn music box on Hal’s dresser. It was covered in bright pink porcelain flowers. He placed it just so, with its slightly demonic glassy stare aimed right at the two of them. And then he left, whistling a little as he locked the front door behind him. 

The man just got stranger all the time.

**Author's Note:**

> As always, more fun stuff [on my tumblr](http://fabula-unica.tumblr.com/).


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